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+Project Gutenberg's Browning and His Century, by Helen Archibald Clarke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Browning and His Century
+
+Author: Helen Archibald Clarke
+
+Release Date: February 14, 2012 [EBook #38874]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
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+
+BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY
+
+
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+  BROWNING'S ITALY
+  BROWNING'S ENGLAND
+  A GUIDE TO MYTHOLOGY
+  ANCIENT MYTHS IN MODERN POETS
+  LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY
+  HAWTHORNE'S COUNTRY
+  THE POETS' NEW ENGLAND
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: BROWNING AT 23 (LONDON 1835)]
+
+
+
+
+  Browning and His Century
+
+
+  BY HELEN ARCHIBALD CLARKE
+  Author of "_Browning's Italy_,"
+  "_Browning's England_," etc.
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
+
+
+  GARDEN CITY      NEW YORK
+  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+  1912
+
+
+
+
+  _Copyright, 1912, by_
+  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.
+
+  _All rights reserved, including that of
+  translation into foreign languages,
+  including the Scandinavian_
+
+
+
+
+  To
+  THE BOSTON BROWNING SOCIETY
+  IN COMMEMORATION OF THE
+  BROWNING CENTENARY--1812-1912
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                    PAGE
+
+  CHAPTER I
+    THE BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT                      3
+
+  CHAPTER II
+    THE CENTURY'S END: PROMISE OF PEACE               77
+
+  CHAPTER III
+    POLITICAL TENDENCIES                             118
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+    SOCIAL IDEALS                                    174
+
+  CHAPTER V
+    ART SHIBBOLETHS                                  217
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+    CLASSIC SURVIVALS                                277
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+    PROPHETIC VISIONS                                342
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  Browning at 23 (London 1835)            _Frontispiece_
+
+                                             FACING PAGE
+
+  Paracelsus                                          38
+
+  Herbert Spencer                                     94
+
+  David Strauss                                      112
+
+  Cardinal Wiseman                                   120
+
+  William Ewart Gladstone                            160
+
+  William Morris                                     196
+
+  John Burns                                         208
+
+  Alfred Tennyson                                    250
+
+  A. C. Swinburne                                    260
+
+  Dante Gabriel Rossetti                             266
+
+  George Meredith                                    272
+
+  Euripides                                          296
+
+  Aristophanes                                       306
+
+  Walter Savage Landor                               330
+
+  Browning at 77 (1889)                              360
+
+
+
+
+BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+
+TO ROBERT BROWNING
+
+  "Say not we know but rather that we love,
+    And so we know enough." Thus deeply spoke
+    The Sage; and in men's stunted hearts awoke
+  A haunting fear, for fain are they to prove
+  Their life, their God, with yeas and nays that move
+    The mind's uncertain flow. Then fierce outbroke,--
+    Knowledge, the child of pain shall we revoke?
+  The guide wherewith men climb to things above?
+  Nay, calm your fears! 'Tis but the mere mind's knowing,
+    The soul's alone the poet worthy deeming.
+    Let mind up-build its entities of seeming
+  With toil and tears! The toil is but for showing
+    How much there lacks of truth. But 'tis no dreaming
+    When sky throbs back to heart, with God's love beaming.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT
+
+
+During the nineteenth century, which has already receded far enough into
+the perspective of the past for us to be able to take a comprehensive view
+of it, the advance guard of the human race found itself in a position
+entirely different from that ever before occupied by it. Through the
+knowledge of cosmic, animal, and social evolution gradually accumulated by
+the laborious and careful studies of special students in every department
+of historical research and scientific experiment, a broader and higher
+state of self-consciousness was attained. Mankind, on its most perceptive
+plane, no longer pinned its faith to inherited traditions, whether of
+religion, art, or morals. Every conceivable fact and every conceivable
+myth was to be tested in the laboratory of the intellect, even the
+intellect itself was to undergo dissection, with the result that, once for
+all, it has been decided what particular range of human knowledge lies
+within the reach of mental perception, and what particular range of human
+knowledge can be grasped only through spiritual perception.
+
+Such a momentous decision as this in the history of thought has not been
+reached without a long and protracted struggle extending back into the
+early days of Christianity, nor, it may be said, is the harmony as yet
+complete, for there are to-day, and perhaps always will be, human beings
+whose consciousness is not fully orbed and who either seek their point of
+equilibrium too entirely in the plane of mind or too entirely in the plane
+of spirit.
+
+In the early days, before Christianity came to bring its "sword upon
+earth," there seems to have been little or no consciousness of such a
+struggle. The ancient Hindu, observing Nature and meditating upon the
+universe, arrived intuitively at a perception of life and its processes
+wonderfully akin to that later experimentally proved by the nineteenth
+century scientist, nor did he have a suspicion that such truth was in any
+way antagonistic to religious truth. On the contrary, he considered that,
+by it, the beauty and mystery of religion was immeasurably enhanced, and,
+letting his imagination play upon his intuition, he brought forth a theory
+of spiritual evolution in which the world to-day is bound to recognize
+many elements of beauty and power necessary to any complete conception of
+religion in the future.
+
+Even the Babylonians made their guesses at an evolutionary theory of the
+universe. Greek philosophy, later, was permeated with the idea, it having
+been derived by them perhaps from the Chaldeans through the Phoenicians,
+or if the theories of Aryan migrations be correct, perhaps through
+inheritance from a remote Aryan ancestry.
+
+When Christian thought gained its hold upon the world, the account of
+creation given in Genesis became so thoroughly impressed upon the minds of
+men that it was regarded as the orthodox view, rooted in divine
+revelation, and to question it was to incur the danger of being called an
+atheist, with its possibly uncomfortable consequences of being martyred.
+
+Strangely enough, the early Church adopted into its fold many pagan
+superstitions, such as a belief in witchcraft and in signs and wonders, as
+well as some myths, but this great truth upon which the pagan mind had
+stumbled, it would have none of.
+
+These two circumstances--the adoption on the part of Christianity of pagan
+superstitions and its utter repudiation of the pagan guesses upon
+evolution, carrying within it the germs of truth, later to be unearthed by
+scientific research--furnished exactly the right conditions for the
+throwing down of the gauntlet between the mind and the spirit. The former,
+following intellectual guidance, found itself coming more and more into
+antagonism with the spirit, not yet freed from the trammels of
+imagination. The latter, guided by imagination, continued to exercise a
+mythopoeic faculty, which not only brought it more and more into
+antagonism with the mind, but set up within its own realm an internecine
+warfare which has blackened the pages of religious history with crimes and
+martyrdoms so terrible as to force the conviction that the true devil in
+antagonism to spiritual development has been the imagination of mankind,
+masquerading as verity, and not yet having found its true function in art.
+
+Regarded from the point of view of the student of intellectual
+development, this conflict of two thousand years has the fascination of a
+great drama of which the protagonist is the mind struggling to free the
+spirit from its subjection to the evil aspects of the imagination. Great
+thinkers in the field of science, philosophy, and religion are the
+_dramatis personæ_, and in the onward rush of this world-drama the
+sufferings of those who have fallen by the way seem insignificant.
+
+But when the student of history takes his more intimate survey of the
+purely human aspects of the struggle, heartrending, indeed, become the
+tragedies resulting from the exercise of human bigotry and stupidity.
+
+Indignation and sorrow take possession of us when we think upon such a
+spectacle as that of Roger Bacon, making ready to perform a few scientific
+experiments before a small audience at Oxford, confronted by an uproar in
+which monks, fellows, and students rushed about, their garments streaming
+in the wind, crying out, "Down with the magician!" And this was only the
+beginning of a persecution which ended in his teaching being solemnly
+condemned by the authorities of the Franciscan order and himself thrown
+for fourteen years into prison, whence he issued an old and broken man of
+eighty.
+
+More barbarous still was the treatment of Giordano Bruno, a strange sort
+of man who developed his philosophy in about twenty-five works, some
+prose, some poetry, some dialogues, some comedies, with such enticing
+titles as "The Book of the Great Key," "The Explanation of the Thirty
+Seals," "The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast," "The Threefold
+Minimum," "The Composition of Images," "The Innumerable, the Immense and
+the Unfigurable." His utterances were vague, especially to the intellects
+of his time, yet not so vague that theology, whether Catholic or
+Calvinistic, did not at once take fright.
+
+He held that the investigation of nature in the unbiased light of reason
+is our only guide to truth. He rejected antiquity, tradition, faith, and
+authority; he exclaimed, "Let us begin by doubt. Let us doubt till we
+know." Acting upon these principles, he began to unfold again that current
+of Greek thought which the system imposed by the Church had intercepted
+for more than a thousand years, and arrived at a conception of evolution
+prefiguring the modern theories.
+
+He conceived the law of the universe to be unceasing change. "Each
+individual," he declared, "is the resultant of innumerable individuals;
+each species is the starting point for the next." Furthermore, he
+maintained that the perfecting of the individual soul is the aim of all
+progress.
+
+Tenets so opposite to the orthodox view of special creation and the fall
+of man could not be allowed to go unchallenged. It is to be remembered
+that he was a priest in holy orders in the Convent of St. Dominic, and in
+the year 1576 he was accused by the Provincial of his order of heresy on
+one hundred and thirty counts. He did not await his trial, but fled to
+Rome, thence to northern Italy, and became for some years a wanderer. He
+was imprisoned at Geneva; at Toulouse he spent a year lecturing on
+Aristotle; in Paris, two years as professor extraordinary in the Sorbonne;
+three years in London, where he became the friend of Sir Philip Sidney,
+and influenced the philosophy of both Bacon and Shakespeare. Oxford,
+however, was unfriendly to his teachings and he was obliged to flee from
+England also. Then he wandered for five years from city to city in
+Germany--at one time warned to leave the town, at another excommunicated,
+at another not even permitted to lodge within the gates. Finally, he
+accepted the invitation of a noble Venetian, Zuane Mocenigo, to visit
+Venice and teach him the higher and secret learning. The two men soon
+quarreled, and Bruno was betrayed by the count into the hands of the
+Inquisition. He was convicted of heresy in Venice and delivered to the
+Inquisition in Rome. He spent seven years in its dungeons, and was again
+tried and convicted, and called upon to recant, which he stoutly refused
+to do. Sentence of death was then passed upon him and he was burned at the
+stake on February 17, 1600, on the Campo de' Fiori, where there now stands
+a statue erected by Progressive Italy in his honor.
+
+His last words were, "I die a martyr, and willingly." Then they cast his
+ashes into the Tiber and placed his name among the accused on the rolls of
+the Church. And there it probably still remains, for no longer ago than
+1889, when his statue was unveiled on the ninth of June, on the site of
+his burning, in full view of the Vatican, Pope Leo XIII, it is said,
+refused food and spent hours in an agony of prayer at the foot of the
+statue of St. Peter. Catholic, and even Protestant, denunciation of Bruno
+at this time showed that the smoke from this particular battle in the war
+of mind with spirit was still far from being laid.
+
+With the fate of Giordano Bruno still fresh in his mind, Galileo succumbed
+to the demands of the Inquisition and recanted, saying that he no longer
+believed what he, himself, with his telescope had proved to be true.
+
+    "I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner and on my
+    knees, and before your Eminences, having before my eyes the Holy
+    Gospel, which I touch with my hands, abjure, curse, and detest the
+    error and the heresy of the movement of the earth."
+
+If this recantation had brought any comfort or peace into his life it
+might have been hard to forgive Galileo's perjury of himself. His
+persecution, however, continued to the end. He was exiled from his family
+and friends, and, even when he had become blind and wasted by sorrow and
+disease, he was still closely watched lest he might utter the awful heresy
+that the earth moved.
+
+A hundred years later than this, when Buffon attempted to teach the simple
+truths of geology, he was deposed from his high position and made to
+recant by the theological faculty of the Sorbonne. The man who promulgated
+geological principles, as firmly established to-day as that of the
+rotation of the earth upon its axis, was forced to write: "I declare that
+I had no intention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I believe
+most firmly all therein related about the creation, both as to order of
+time and matter of fact. I abandon everything in my book respecting the
+formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary to the
+narrative of Moses."
+
+Such are the more heinous examples of the persecution of the men who
+discovered the truths of science. To these should be added the wholesale
+persecution of witches and magicians, for unusual knowledge of any sort
+ran the chance of being regarded as contrary to biblical teaching and of
+being attributed to the machinations of the Prince of Darkness.
+
+Every new step made in the direction of scientific truth has had thus to
+face the most determined opposition. Persecution by torture and death died
+out, but up to the nineteenth century, and well on through it,
+denunciation, excommunication, suppression, the loss of honorable
+positions have all been used as weapons by church or university in the
+attempt to stamp out whatever it considered dangerous and subverting
+doctrines of science.
+
+The decisive battle was not to be inaugurated until the latter half of the
+nineteenth century, with the advent in the field of such names in science
+as Spencer, Darwin, Tyndall and Huxley, and such names in biblical
+criticism as Strauss and Renan.
+
+The outposts, it is true, had been won by advancing scientific thought,
+for step by step the Church had compromised, and had admitted one
+scientific doctrine after another as not incompatible with biblical truth.
+But now, not only theology, the imperfect armor in which the spirit had
+been clothed, was attacked, but the very existence of spirit itself was to
+be questioned. The thinking world was to be divided into materialists and
+supernaturalists. Now, at last, mind and spirit, who in the ages long gone
+had been brothers, were to stand face to face as enemies. Was this mortal
+combat to end in the annihilation of either, or would this, too, end in a
+compromise leading to harmony?
+
+At the dawn of this century, in 1812, came into the world its master
+poetic mind. I say this to-day without hesitation, for no other English
+poet of the century has been so thoroughly aware of the intellectual
+tendencies of his century, and has so emotionalized them and brought them
+before us under the humanly real conditions of dramatic utterance.
+
+It is not surprising, considering this fact, that in his second poem,
+written in 1835, Browning ventures into the arena and at once tackles the
+supreme problem of the age, what is to be the relation of mind and spirit?
+
+It is characteristic of the poetic methods, which dominated his work, that
+he should have presented this problem through the personality of a
+historical figure who played no inconsiderable part in the intellectual
+development of his time, though not a man to whom general historians have
+been in the habit of assigning much space in their pages. Browning,
+however, as Hall Griffin informs us, had been familiar with the name of
+Paracelsus from his childhood, of whom he had read anecdotes in a queer
+book, Wanley's "Wonders of the Little World." Besides, his father's
+library, wherein as a boy he was wont to browse constantly, contained the
+_Opera Omnia_ of Paracelsus.
+
+With the confidence of youth and of genius the poet attempts in this poem
+a solution of the problem. To mind he gives the attribute of knowledge, to
+spirit the attribute of love.
+
+The poem as a whole does not concern us here except as a background for
+its final thoughts. In order, however, to put the situation clearly before
+readers not already familiar with it, I venture to transcribe a portion of
+a former analysis of my own.
+
+Paracelsus aspires to the acquisition of absolute knowledge and feels born
+within him the capabilities for attaining this end, and, when attained, it
+is to be devoted to enlarging the possibilities of man's life. The whole
+race is to be elevated at once. Man may not be doomed to cope with
+seraphs, yet by the exercise of human strength alone he hopes man may one
+day beat God's angels.
+
+He is a revolter, however, against the magical and alchemistic methods of
+his age, which seek for the welfare of men through the elixir of youth or
+the philosopher's stone. He especially disclaims such puerile schemes in
+the passionate moment when he has realized how futile all his lifelong
+efforts have been. He stands, indeed, at the threshold of a new world. He
+has a glimmering of the true scientific methods which would discover first
+the secrets of life's laws, and then use these natural laws to bring about
+life's betterment, instead of hoping for salvation through the discovery
+of some magic secret by means of which life's laws might be overcome. Yet
+he is sufficiently of his own superstitious age to desire and expect
+fairly magical results from the laws he hopes to discover. The creed which
+spurs him to his quest is his belief that truth is inborn in the soul, but
+to set this truth free and make it of use to mankind correspondences in
+outer nature must be found. An intuitive mind like Paracelsus's will
+recognize these natural corollaries of the intuition wherever it finds
+them; and these are what Paracelsus goes forth over the earth to seek
+and find, sure he will "arrive." One illustration of the results so
+obtained is seen in the doctrine of the signatures of plants according to
+which the flowers, leaves, and fruits of plants indicate by their color or
+markings, etc., the particular diseases they are intended to cure. The
+real Paracelsus practised medicine upon this theory.
+
+Though such methods are a long distance from those of the modern
+scientist, who deduces his laws from careful and patient observation of
+nature, they go a step toward his in seeking laws in nature to correspond
+to hypotheses born of intuition.
+
+Browning's presentation of the attitude of mind and the place held by
+Paracelsus in the development of science is exactly in line with the most
+recent criticisms of this extraordinary man's life. According to these he
+fluctuated between the systems of magic then prevalent and scientific
+observation, but always finally threw in the balance of his opinion on the
+side of scientific ways of working; and above all made the great step from
+a belief in the influence of nature upon man to that of the existence of
+parallelisms between nature processes and human processes.
+
+Though he thus opened up new vistas for the benefit of man, he must
+necessarily be a failure, from his own point of view, with his "India" not
+found, his absolute truth unattained; and it is upon this side that the
+poet dwells. For a moment he is somewhat reassured by the apparition of
+Aprile, scarcely a creature of flesh and blood, more the spirit of art who
+aspires to love infinitely and has found the attainment of such love as
+impossible as Paracelsus has found the attainment of knowledge. Both have
+desired to help men, but Paracelsus has desired to help them rather
+through the perfecting, even immortalizing, of their physical being;
+Aprile, through giving man, as he is, infinite sympathy and through
+creating forms of beauty which would show him his own thoughts and hopes
+glorified by the all-seeing touch of the artist.
+
+Paracelsus recognizes his deficient sympathy for mankind, and tries to
+make up for it in his own way by giving out of the fulness of his
+knowledge to men. The scornful and proud reformer has not, however, truly
+learned the lesson of love, and verily has his reward when he is turned
+against by those whom he would teach. Then the old ideal seizes upon him
+again, and still under the influence of Aprile he seeks in human
+experience the loves and passions of mankind which he learns through
+Aprile he had neglected for the ever-illusive secret, but neither does
+success attend him here, and only on his deathbed does his vision clear
+up, and he is made to indulge in a prophetic utterance quite beyond the
+reach of the original Paracelsus.
+
+In this passage is to be found Browning's first contribution to a solution
+of the great problem. That it is instinct with the idea of evolution has
+become a commonplace of Browning criticism, a fact which was at least
+independently or, as far as I know, first pointed out by myself in an
+early essay upon Browning. At the time, I was reading both Browning and
+Spencer, and could not but be impressed by the parallelisms in thought
+between the two, especially those in this seer-like passage and "The Data
+of Ethics."
+
+Writers whose appreciation of a poet is in direct ratio to the number of
+exact historical facts to be found in a poem like to emphasize this fact
+that the doctrine of evolution can be found in the works of Paracelsus.
+Why not? Since, as we have seen it had been floating about in
+philosophical thought in one form or another for some thousands of years.
+
+Indeed, it has been stated upon good authority that the idea of a gradual
+evolution according to law and of a God from whom all being emanates,
+from whom all power proceeds, is an inherent necessity of the Aryan mind
+as opposed to the Semitic idea of an outdwelling God and of
+supernaturalism. Thus, all down the ages the Aryan mind has revolted from
+time to time against the religious ideas superimposed upon it by the
+Semitic mind. This accounts for the numerous heresies within the bosom of
+the Church as well as for the scientific advance against the superstitions
+of the Church.
+
+Generalizations of this sweeping order are apt to contain only partial
+truth. It would probably be nearer the whole truth, as we are enabled
+to-day to trace historical development, to say that, starting with
+opposite conceptions, these two orders of mind have worked toward each
+other and the harmonization of their respective points of view, and,
+furthermore, that this difference in mind belongs to a period prior even
+to the emergence of the Aryan or the Semitic. Researches in mythology and
+folklore seem to indicate that no matter how far back one may go in the
+records of human thought there will be found these two orders of mind--one
+which naturally thinks of the universe as the outcome of law, and one
+which naturally thinks of it as the outcome of creation. There are
+primitive myths in which mankind is supposed to be descended from a
+primitive ancestor, which may range all the way from a serpent to an oak
+tree, or, as in a certain Zulu myth, a bed of reeds growing on the back of
+a small animal. And there are equally primitive myths in which mankind is
+created out of the trees or the earth by an external agent, varying in
+importance from a grasshopper to a more or less spiritual being.
+
+Browning did not need to depend upon Paracelsus for his knowledge of
+evolution. He may not have known that the ancient Hindu in the dim mists
+of the past had an intuition of the cosmic egg from which all life had
+evolved, and that he did not know of the theory as it is developed in the
+great German philosophers we are certain, because he, himself, asseverated
+that he had never read the German philosophers, but it is hardly possible
+that he did not know something of it as it appears in the writings of the
+Greek philosophers, for Greek literature was among the earliest of his
+studies. He might, for instance, have taken a hint from the speculations
+of that half mythical marvel of a man, Empedocles, with which the
+Paracelsus theory of the universe, as it appears in the passage under
+discussion, has many points of contact.
+
+According to Empedocles, the four primal elements, earth, air, fire and
+water, are worked upon by the forces of love and discord. By means of
+these forces, out of the primal elements are evolved various and horrible
+monstrosities before the final form of perfection is reached. It is true
+he did not correctly imagine the stages in the processes of evolution, for
+instead of a gradual development of one form from another, he describes
+the process as a haphazard and chaotic one. "Many heads sprouted up
+without necks, and naked arms went wandering forlorn of shoulders, and
+solitary eyes were straying destitute of foreheads." These detached
+portions of bodies coming together by haphazard produced the earlier
+monstrous forms. "Many came forth with double faces and two breasts, some
+shaped like oxen with a human front, others, again, of human race with a
+bull's head." However, the latter part of the evolutionary process as
+described by Empedocles, when Love takes command, seems especially
+pertinent as a possible source of Browning's thought:
+
+    "When strife has reached the very bottom of the seething mass, and
+    love assumes her station in the center of the ball, then everything
+    begins to come together, and to form one whole--not instantaneously,
+    but different substances come forth, according to a steady process of
+    development. Now, when these elements are mingling, countless kinds of
+    things issue from their union. Much, however, remains unmixed, in
+    opposition to the mingling elements, and these, malignant strife still
+    holds within his grasp. For he has not yet withdrawn himself
+    altogether to the extremities of the globe; but part of his limbs
+    still remain within its bounds, and part have passed beyond. As
+    strife, however, step by step retreats, mild and innocent love pursues
+    him with her force divine; things which had been immortal instantly
+    assume mortality; the simple elements become confused by interchange
+    of influences. When these are mingled, then the countless kinds of
+    mortal beings issue forth, furnished with every sort of form--a sight
+    of wonder."
+
+Though evolution was no new idea, it had been only a hypothesis arrived at
+intuitionally or suggested by crude observations of nature until by
+perfected methods of historical study and of scientific experimentation
+proof was furnished of its truth as a scientific verity.
+
+Let us glance at the situation at the time when Paracelsus was published.
+In 1835 science had made great strides in the direction of proving the
+correctness of the hypothesis. Laplace had lived and died and had given to
+the world in mathematical reasoning of remarkable power proof of the
+nebular hypothesis, which was later to be verified by Fraunhofer's
+discoveries in spectrum analysis. Lamarck had lived and died and had
+given to the world his theory of animal evolution. Lyall in England had
+shown that geological formations were evolutionary rather than
+cataclysmal. In fact, greater and lesser scientific lights in England and
+on the continent were every day adding fresh facts to the burden of proof
+in favor of the hypothesis. It was in the air, and denunciations of it
+were in the air.
+
+Most interesting of all, however, in connection with our present theme is
+the fact that Herbert Spencer was still a lad of fifteen, who was
+independently of Darwin to work out a complete philosophy of evolution,
+which was to be applied in every department of cosmic, geologic, plant,
+animal and human activity, but (and this is of special interest) he was
+not to give to the world his plan for a synthetic philosophy until 1860,
+and not to publish his "First Principles" until 1862, nor the first
+instalment of the "Data of Ethics," the fruit of his whole system, until
+1879.
+
+Besides being familiar with the idea as it crops out in Greek thought, it
+is impossible that the young Browning was not cognizant of the scientific
+attitude of the time. In fact, he tells us as much himself, for when
+Doctor Wonivall asked him some questions as to his attitude toward Darwin,
+Browning responded in a letter: "In reality all that seems proved in
+Darwin's scheme was a conception familiar to me from the beginning."
+
+Entirely familiar with the evolutionary idea, then, however he may have
+derived it, it is just what might be expected that he should have worked
+it into Paracelsus's final theory of life. The remarkable thing is that he
+should have applied its principles in so masterly a fashion--namely, that
+he should have made a complete philosophical synthesis by bringing the
+idea of evolution to bear upon all natural, human and spiritual processes
+of growth twenty-five years before Herbert Spencer, who is regarded on
+this particular ground as the master mind of the century, gave his
+synthetic philosophy of evolution to the world.
+
+A momentary glance at the passage in question will make this clear.
+Paracelsus traces first development as illustrated in geological forms:
+
+    "The center-fire heaves underneath the earth,
+  And the earth changes like a human face;
+  The molten one bursts up among the rocks,
+  Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright
+  In hidden mines, spots barren river beds,
+  Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask."
+
+Next he touches upon plant life and animal life. The grass grows bright,
+the boughs are swollen with blooms, ants make their ado, birds fly in
+merry flocks, the strand is purple with its tribe of nested limpets,
+savage creatures seek their loves in wood and plain. Then he shows how in
+all this animal life are scattered attributes foreshadowing a being that
+will combine them. Then appears primitive man, only half enlightened, who
+gains knowledge through the slow, uncertain fruit of toil, whose love is
+not serenely pure, but strong from weakness, a love which endures and
+doubts and is oppressed. And out of the travail of the human soul as it
+proceeds from lower to higher forms is finally evolved self-conscious
+man--man who consciously looks back upon all that has preceded him and
+interprets nature by means of his own human perceptions. The winds are
+henceforth voices, wailing or a shout, a querulous mutter or a quick, gay
+laugh, never a senseless gust, now man is born.
+
+But development does not end with the attainment of this
+self-consciousness. After this stage has been reached there continues an
+evolution which is distinctively spiritual, a tendency to God. Browning
+was not content with the evolution of man, he was prophetic of the final
+flowering of man in the superman, although he had never heard of
+Nietszche.
+
+The corollary to this progressive theory of life, a view held by
+scientific thinkers, is that sin is not depravity, but is merely a lack of
+development. Paracelsus is therefore made wise to know even hate is but a
+mask of love, to see a good in evil, a hope in ill-success, to sympathize,
+even be proud of man's half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim struggles for
+truth--all with a touch of nobleness despite their error, upward tending
+all, though weak.
+
+Though there are points of contact between the thought of the true
+Paracelsus and of Browning, the points of contact between Spencer and
+Browning are far more significant, for Browning seems intuitively to have
+perceived the fundamental truths of social and psychic evolution at the
+early age of twenty-three--truths which the philosopher worked out only
+after years of laborious study.
+
+We, who, to-day, are familiar with the application of the theory of
+evolution to every object from a dustpan to a flying machine, can hardly
+throw ourselves into the atmosphere of the first half of the last century
+when this dynamic ideal was flung into a world with static ideals. The
+Christian world knew little and cared less about the guesses of Greek
+philosophers, whom they regarded when they did know about them as
+unregenerate pagans. German thought was caviare to the general, and what
+new thought of a historical or scientific nature made its way into the
+strongholds of conservatism filled people with suspicion and dread. Such a
+sweeping synthesis, therefore, as Browning gives of dawning scientific
+theories in Paracelsus was truly phenomenal. That it did not prove a bone
+of contention and arouse controversies as hot as those which were waged
+later around such scientific leaders as Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, and
+Clifford was probably due to the circumstance that the poem was little
+read and less understood, and also to the fact that it contained other
+elements which overlaid the bare presentation of the doctrines of
+evolution.
+
+So far I have spoken only of the form of the Paracelsus theory of life,
+but a theory of life to be complete must have soul as well as form. Only
+in adding the soul side to his theory of life does Browning really give
+his solution of the problem, what is to be the relation of mind and
+spirit?
+
+One other point of resemblance is to be noted between the thought of
+Browning's Paracelsus and Herbert Spencer. They agree that ultimate
+knowledge is beyond the grasp of the intellect. Neither was this a new
+idea; but up to the time of Spencer it was taken simply as a negative
+conclusion. Spencer, however, having found this negation makes it the body
+of his philosophy--a body so shadowy that many of his critics consider it
+too ghostly to stand as a substantial basis for philosophical thought. He
+regards the failure of the intellect to picture the nature of the absolute
+as the most certain proof that our intuitions of its existence are
+trustworthy, and upon this he bases all religious aspiration. Like the
+psalmist, he exclaims, "Who by searching can find out God?"
+
+The attitude of Paracelsus is identical as far as the intellect is
+concerned. His life, spent in the search for knowledge, had proved it to
+him. But he does not, like Spencer, make it the body of his philosophy.
+Through the influence of Aprile he is led to a definite conception of the
+Infinite as a Being whose especial characteristic is that he feels!--feels
+unbounded joy in his own creations. This is eminently an artist's or
+poet's perception of the relation of God to his universe. As Aprile in one
+place says, "God is the perfect poet, who in his person acts his own
+creations."
+
+As I have already pointed out, the evil of pain, of decay, of degeneration
+is taken no account of.
+
+There is the constant passing onward from joy to joy. All the processes of
+nature from the simplest to the most complex bring, in their turn, a
+delight to their Creator until man appears, and is not only a joy to his
+Creator, but is the first in the order of creation to share in the joy of
+existence, the first to arrive at the full consciousness of beauty. So
+overwhelming is this consciousness of beauty that man perceives it
+struggling for expression in the hates and fallacies of undeveloped
+natures.
+
+All this is characteristic of the artistic way of looking at life. The
+artist is prone either to ignore the ugly or to transmute it by art into
+something possessing beauty of power if not of loveliness. What are plays
+like "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," "Brand" and "Peer Gynt," music like "Tristan
+and Isolde" or the "Pathetic Symphony," Rodin's statues, but actual,
+palpable realizations of the fact that hate is but a mask of love, or that
+human fallacies and human passions have within them the seeds of immense
+beauty if only there appear the artist who can bring them forth. If this
+is true of the human artist, how much more is it true of the divine
+artist in whose shadow, as Pompilia says, even a Guido may find healing.
+
+The optimism of such a theory of existence is intoxicating. Not only does
+this artist-man look backward and rejoice in all the beauty of past phases
+of creation, but he looks forward to endless progression in the enjoyment
+of fresh phases of beauty--"a flying point of bliss remote." This is a
+universe in which the Prometheus of the old myths is indeed unbound.
+Mankind is literally free to progress forever upward. If there are some
+men in darkness, they are like plants in mines struggling to break out
+into the sunlight they see beyond.
+
+The interesting question arises here, was Browning, himself, entirely
+responsible for the soul of his Paracelsus theory of life or was there
+some source beyond him from which he drew inspiration?
+
+It has frequently been suggested that Aprile in this poem is a sort of
+symbolic representation of Shelley. Why not rather a composite of both
+Shelley and Keats, the poet of love and the poet of beauty? An examination
+of the greatest poems of these two writers, "Prometheus Unbound" and
+"Hyperion," will bring out the elements in both which I believe entered
+into Browning's conception.
+
+In the exalted symbolism of the "Prometheus Unbound" Shelley shows that,
+in his view, evil and suffering were not inherent in the nature of things,
+the tyranny of evil having gained its ascendancy through the persistence
+of out-worn ideals, such as that of Power or Force symbolized in the Greek
+idea of Jupiter. Prometheus is the revolting mind of mankind, enslaved by
+the tyranny of Jupiter, hating the tyrant, yet determined to endure all
+the tyrant can inflict upon him rather than admit his right to rule. The
+freeing of Prometheus and the dethronement of Jupiter come through the
+awakening in the heart of Prometheus of pity for the tyrant--that is,
+Prometheus has learned to love his enemies as he loves his friends. The
+remainder of the poem is occupied with showing the effects upon humanity
+of this universal awakening of love.
+
+In the fine passage where the Spirit of the Earth hears the trumpet of the
+Spirit of the Hour sound in a great city, it beholds all ugly human shapes
+and visages which had caused it pain pass floating through the air, and
+fading still
+
+  "Into the winds that scattered them, and those
+  From whom they passed seemed mild and lovely forms
+  After some foul disguise had fallen, and all
+  Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise
+  And greetings of delighted wonder, all
+  Went to their sleep again."
+
+And the Spirit of the Hour relates:
+
+  "Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled
+  The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,
+  There was a change: the impalpable thin air
+  And the all-circling sunlight were transformed
+  As if the sense of love dissolved in them
+  Had folded itself around the sphered world."
+
+In the meantime, the over-souls of humanity--Prometheus, symbolic of
+thought or knowledge, is reunited to Asia, his spouse, symbolic of Nature
+or emotion, from whom he has long been separated and together with Asia's
+sisters, Panthea and Ione--retire to the wonderful cave where they are
+henceforth to dwell and where their occupations are inspired by the most
+childlike and exalted moods of the soul.
+
+Before considering the bearing of their life of love and art in the cave
+upon the character of Aprile let us turn our attention for a moment to a
+remarkable passage in "Hyperion," which poem was written as far back as
+1820. Keats, like Shelley, deals with the dethronement of gods, but it
+is the older dynasty of Titans--Saturn and Hyperion usurped by Jupiter and
+Apollo. Shelley's thought in the "Prometheus" is strongly influenced by
+Christian ideals, but Keats's is thoroughly Greek.
+
+The passing of one series of gods and the coming into power of another
+series of gods was a familiar idea in Greek mythology. It reflected at
+once the literal fact that ever higher and higher forces of nature had
+been deified by them, beginning with crude Nature gods and ending with
+symbols of the most ideal human attributes, and at the same time that
+their thought leaned in the direction of interpreting nature as an
+evolutionary process. Seizing upon this, Keats has presented in the words
+of the old Titan Oceanus a theory of the evolution of beauty quite as
+startling as a prophecy of psychological theories upon this subject as
+Browning's is of cosmic and social theories. Addressing Saturn, Oceanus
+says:
+
+  "We fall by course of Nature's law, not force
+  Of thunder, or of love....
+    ... As thou wast not the first of powers
+  So art thou not the last; it cannot be:
+  From chaos and parental darkness came
+  Light, the first fruits of that intestine broil,
+  That sullen ferment, which for wondrous ends
+  Was ripening in itself. The ripe hour came
+  And with it light, and light, engendering
+  Upon its own producer, forthwith touched,
+  The whole enormous matter into life.
+  Upon that very hour, our parentage
+  The Heavens and the Earth were manifest;
+  Then thou first-born, and we the giant-race,
+  Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+  As Heaven and Earth are fairer far
+  Than chaos and blank darkness, though once chiefs,
+  And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth
+  In form and shape compact and beautiful,
+  In will, in action free, companionship
+  And thousand other signs of purer life,
+  So on our heels a fresh perfection treads,
+  A power more strong in beauty, born of us
+  And fated to excel us, as we pass
+  In glory that old darkness: nor are we
+  Thereby more conquered than by us the rule
+  Of shapeless chaos. For 'tis the eternal law
+  That first in beauty should be first in might.
+  Yea, by that law, another race may drive
+  Our conquerors to mourn as we do now."
+
+There is in the attitude of Oceanus a magnificent acceptance of this
+ruthless course of nature reminding one of that taken by such men as
+Huxley and Clifford in the face of their own scientific discoveries, but
+one is immediately struck by the absence of love in the idea. An Apollo,
+no matter what new beauty he may have, himself, to offer, who yet
+disregards the beauty of Hyperion and calmly accepts the throne of the sun
+in his stead, does not satisfy us. What unreason it is that so splendid a
+being as Hyperion should be deposed! As a matter of fact, he was not
+deposed. He is left standing forever in our memories in splendor like the
+morn, for Keats did not finish the poem and no picture of the enthroned
+Apollo is given. Perhaps Keats remembered his earlier utterance, "A thing
+of beauty is a joy forever," and cared for his own Hyperion too much to
+banish him for the sake of Apollo.
+
+Be that as it may, the points in relation to our subject are that
+Shelley's emphasis is upon the conservation of beauty, while Keats's
+emphasis is upon the evolution of new beauty.
+
+In the cave where Prometheus and Asia dwell--the cave of universal
+spirit--is given forth the inspiration to humanity for painting, poetry
+and arts, yet to be born, and all these arts return to delight them,
+fashioned into form by human artists. Love is the ruling principle.
+Therefore all forms of beautiful art are immortal. Aprile,[1] as he
+first appears, is an elaboration upon this idea. He would love all
+humanity with such intensity that he would immortalize in all forms of
+art--painting, poetry, music--every thought and emotion of which the human
+soul is capable, and this done he would say:
+
+                            "His spirits created--
+  God grants to each a sphere to be its world,
+  Appointed with the various objects needed
+  To satisfy its own peculiar want;
+  So, I create a world for these my shapes
+  Fit to sustain their beauty and their strength."
+
+In short, he would found a universal art museum exactly like the cave in
+which Prometheus dwelt. The stress is no more than it is in Shelley upon a
+search for new beauty, and there is not a hint that a coming beauty shall
+blot out the old until Aprile recognizes Paracelsus as his king. Then he
+awakes to the fact that his own ideal has been partial, because he has
+not been a seeker after knowledge, or new beauty, and in much the same
+spirit as Oceanus, he exclaims:
+
+  "Lo, I forget my ruin, and rejoice
+  In thy success, as thou! Let our God's praise
+  Go bravely through the world at last! What care
+  Through me or thee?"
+
+But Paracelsus had learned a lesson through Aprile which the Apollo of
+Keats had not learned. He does not accept kingship at the expense of
+Aprile as Apollo would do at the expense of Hyperion. He includes in his
+final theory of life all that is beautiful in Aprile's or Shelley's ideal
+and adds to it all that is beautiful of the Keats ideal. The form of his
+philosophy is evolutionary, and up to the time of his meeting with Aprile
+had expressed itself as the search for knowledge. Through Aprile his
+philosophy becomes imbued with soul, the attributes of which are the
+spirit of love and the spirit of beauty, one of which conserves and
+immortalizes beauty, the other of which searches out new beauty.
+
+So, working hand in hand, they become one, while the search for knowledge,
+thus spiritualized, becomes the search for beauty always inspired by love.
+The aim of the evolutionary process thus becomes the unfolding of ever
+new phases of beauty in which God takes endless delight, and to the final
+enjoyment of which mankind shall attain.
+
+To sum up, Browning's solution of the problem in the Paracelsus theory of
+life is reached not only through a synthesis of the doctrines of evolution
+as applied to universal activities, cosmic and human, prophetic, on the
+one hand, of the most advanced scientific thought of the century, but it
+is a synthesis of these and of the art-spirit in its twofold aspect of
+love and beauty as already expressed in the poetry of Shelley and Keats.
+
+It is not in the least probable that Browning set to work consciously to
+piece together these ideals. That is not the method of the artist! But
+being familiar to him in the two best beloved poets of his youth, they had
+sunk into his very being, and welled forth from his own subconsciousness,
+charged with personal emotion, partly dramatic, partly the expression of
+his own true feeling at the time, and the result be it said is one of the
+most inspiring and beautiful passages in English poetry.
+
+[Illustration: PARACELSUS]
+
+At the end of his life and the end of the century Herbert Spencer, who had
+spent years of labor to prove the fallacies in all religious dogmas, and
+who had insisted upon religion's being entirely relegated to
+intellectually unknowable regions of thought, spoke in his autobiography
+of the mysteries inherent in life, in the evolution of human beings, in
+consciousness, in human destiny--mysteries that the very advance of
+science makes more and more evident, exhibits as more and more profound
+and impenetrable, adding:
+
+    "Thus religious creeds, which in one way or other occupy the sphere
+    that rational interpretation seeks to occupy and fails, and fails the
+    more, the more it seeks, I have come to regard with a sympathy based
+    on community of need: feeling that dissent from them results from
+    inability to accept the solutions offered, joined with the wish that
+    solutions could be found."
+
+Loyal to the last to his determination to accept as knowledge only what
+the intellect could prove, he never permitted himself to come under the
+awakening influence of an Aprile, yet like Browning's ancient Greek,
+Cleon, he longed for a solution of the mystery.
+
+At the dawn of the century, and in his youth, Browning ventured upon a
+solution. In the remainder of this and the next chapter I shall attempt to
+show what elements in this solution the poet retained to the end of his
+life, how his thought became modified, and what relation his final
+solution bears to the final thought of the century.
+
+In this first attempt at a synthesis of life in which the attributes
+peculiar to the mind and to the spirit are brought into harmonious
+relationship, Browning is more the intuitionalist than the scientist. His
+convictions well forth with all the force of an inborn revelation, just as
+kindred though much less rational views of nature's processes sprang up in
+the mind of the ancient Hindu or the ancient Greek.
+
+The philosophy of life herein flashed out by the poet was later to be
+elaborated fully on its objective or observational side by Spencer--the
+philosopher par excellence of evolution--and finally, also, of course, on
+the objective side, to become an assured fact of science through the
+publication in 1859 of Darwin's epoch-making book, "The Origin of
+Species," wherein the laws, so disturbing to many at the time, of natural
+selection and the survival of the fittest were fully set forth.
+
+While the genetic view of nature, as the phraseology of to-day goes, had
+been anticipated in writers on cosmology like Leibnitz and Laplace, in
+geology by such men as Hutton and Lyall, and had entered into the domain
+of embryology through the researches of Von Baer, and while Spencer had
+already formulated a philosophy of evolution, Darwin went out into the
+open and studied the actual facts in the domain of living beings. His
+studies made evolution a certainty. They revealed the means by which its
+processes were accomplished, and in so doing pointed to an origin of man
+entirely opposed to orthodox views upon this subject. Thus was inaugurated
+the last great phase in the struggle between mind and spirit.
+
+Henceforth, science stood completely revealed as the unflinching searcher
+of truth. Intuition was but a handmaid whose duty was to formulate working
+hypotheses, to become scientific law if provable by investigation or
+experiment, to be discarded if not.
+
+The aspects which this battle has assumed in the latter half of the
+century have been many and various. Older sciences with a new lease of
+life and sciences entirely new have advanced along the path pointed out by
+the doctrines of evolution. Battalions of determined men have held aloft
+the banner of uncompromising truth. Each battalion has stormed truth's
+citadel only to find that about its inmost reality is an impregnable wall.
+The utmost which has been attained in any case is a working hypothesis,
+useful in bringing to light many new objective phenomena, it is true,
+but, in the end, serving only to deepen the mystery inherent in the nature
+of all things.
+
+Such a working hypothesis was the earlier one of gravitation whose laws of
+action were elaborated by Sir Isaac Newton, and by the great mind of
+Laplace were still further developed with marvelous mathematical precision
+in his "Méchanique Celeste."
+
+Such another hypothesis is that of the atomic theory of the constitution
+of matter usually associated with the name of Dalton, though it has
+undergone many modifications from other scientific thinkers. Of this
+hypothesis Theodore Merz writes in his history of nineteenth-century
+scientific thought:
+
+    "As to the nature of the differences of the elements, the atomic view
+    gives no information; it simply asserts these differences, assumes
+    them as physical constants, and tries to describe them by number and
+    measurement. The atomic view is therefore at best only a provisional
+    basis, a convenient resting place, similar to that which Newton found
+    in physical astronomy, and on which has been established the
+    astronomical view of nature."
+
+The vibratory theories of the ether, the theories of the conservation of
+energy, the vitalistic view of life, the theory of parallelism of physical
+and psychical phenomena are all such hypotheses. They have been of
+incalculable value in helping to a larger knowledge of the appearances of
+things, and in the formation of laws of action and reaction, but in no way
+have they aided in revealing the inner or transcendent realities of the
+myriad manifestations of nature and life!
+
+During the last half of the century this truth has forced itself with ever
+increasing power upon the minds of scientists, and has resulted in many
+divisions among the ranks. Some rest upon phenomena as the final reality;
+hence materialistic or mechanical views of life. Some believe that the
+only genuine reality is the one undiscoverable by science; hence new
+presentations of metaphysical views of life.
+
+During these decades the solid phalanx of religious believers has
+continued to watch from its heights with more or less of fear the advance
+of science. Here, too, there has been division in the ranks. Many
+denounced the scientists as the destroyers of religion; others like the
+good Bishop Colenso could write such words as these in 1873: "Bless God
+devoutly for the gift of modern science"; and who ten years earlier had
+expressed satisfaction in the fact that superstitious belief in the letter
+of the Bible was giving way to a true appreciation of the real value of
+the ancient Hebrew Scriptures as containing the dawn of religious light.
+
+From another quarter came the critical students of the Bible, who
+subjected its contents to the keen tests of historical and archæological
+study. Serene, above all the turmoil, was the small band of genuine
+philosophers who, like Browning's own musician, Abt Vogler, knew the very
+truth. No matter what disturbing facts may be brought to light by science,
+be it man's descent from Anthropoids or a mechanical view of sensation,
+they continue to dwell unshaken in the light of a transcendent truth which
+reaches them through some other avenue than that of the mind.
+
+Browning belonged by nature in this last group. Already in "Sordello" his
+attention is turned to the development of the soul, and from that time on
+to the end of his career he is the champion of the soul-side of existence
+with all that it implies of character development--"little else being
+worth study," as he declared in his introduction to a second edition of
+the poem written twenty years after its first appearance.
+
+On this rock, the human soul, he takes his stand, and, though all the
+complex waves of the tempest of nineteenth-century thought break against
+his feet, he remains firm.
+
+Beginning with "Sordello," it is no longer evolution as applied to every
+aspect of the universe but evolution as applied to the human spirit which
+has his chief interest. Problems growing out of the marvelous developments
+of such sciences as astronomy, geology, physics, chemistry or biology do
+not enter into the main body of the poet's thought, though there are
+allusions many and exact which show his familiarity with the growth of
+these various objective sciences during his life.
+
+During all the middle years of his poetic career the relations of the mind
+and the spirit seemed to fascinate Browning, especially upon the side of
+the problems connected with the supernatural bases of religious
+experience. These are the problems which grew out of that phase of
+scholarly advance represented by biblical criticism.
+
+Such a poem as "Saul," for example, though full of a humanity and
+tenderness, as well as of a sheer poetic beauty, which endear it alike to
+those who appreciate little more than the content of the poem, and to
+those whose appreciation is that of the connoisseur in poetic art, is
+nevertheless an interpretation of the origin of prophecy, especially of
+the Messianic idea, which places Browning in the van of the thought of the
+century on questions connected with biblical criticism.
+
+At the time when "Saul" was written, 1845, modern biblical criticism had
+certainly gained very little hearing in England, for even as late as 1862
+Bishop Colenso's enlightened book on the Pentateuch was received, as one
+writer expresses it, with "almost unanimous disapprobation and widespread
+horror."
+
+Critics of the Bible there had been since the seventeenth century, but
+they had produced a confused mass of stuff in their attacks upon the
+authenticity of the Bible against which the orthodox apologists had
+succeeded in holding their own. At the end of the eighteenth and the dawn
+of the nineteenth century came the more systematic criticism of German
+scholars, echoes of whose theories found their way into England through
+the studies of such men as Pusey. But these, though they gave full
+consideration to the foremost of the German critics of the day, ranged
+themselves, for the most part, on the side of orthodoxy.
+
+Eichhorn, one of the first of the Germans to be studied in England, had
+found a point of departure in the celebrated "Wolfenbüttel Fragments,"
+which had been printed by Lessing from manuscripts by an unknown writer
+Reimarus discovered in the Wolfenbüttel library. These fragments represent
+criticism of the sweepingly destructive order, characteristic of what has
+been called the naturalistic school. Although Eichhorn agreed with the
+writer of the "Fragments" that the biblical narratives should be divested
+of all their supernatural aspects, he did not interpret the supernatural
+elements as simply frauds designed to deceive in order that personal ends
+might be gained. He restored dignity to the narrative by insisting at once
+upon its historical verity and upon a natural interpretation of the
+supernatural--"a spontaneous illumination reflected from antiquity
+itself," which might result from primitive misunderstanding of natural
+phenomena, from the poetical embellishment of facts, or the symbolizing of
+an idea.
+
+Doctor Paulus, in his commentary on the Gospels (1800), carried the idea
+still farther, and the rationalistic school of Bible criticism became an
+assured fact, though Kant at this time developed an entirely different
+theory of Bible interpretation, which in a sense harked back to the older
+allegorical interpretation of the Bible.
+
+He did not trouble himself at all about the historical accuracy of the
+narratives. He was concerned only in discovering the idea underlying the
+stories, the moral gist of them in relation to human development. With the
+naturalists and the rationalists, he put aside any idea of Divine
+revelation. It was the moral aspiration of the authors, themselves, which
+threw a supernatural glamour over their accounts of old traditions and
+turned them into symbols of life instead of merely records of bona fide
+facts of history. The weakness of Kant's standpoint was later pointed out
+by Strauss, whose opinion is well summed up in the following paragraph.
+
+"Whilst Kant sought to educe moral thoughts from the biblical writings,
+even in their historical part, and was even inclined to consider these
+thoughts as the fundamental object of the history: on the other hand he
+derived these thoughts only from himself and the cultivation of his age,
+and therefore could seldom assume that they had actually been laid down by
+the authors of these writings; and on the other hand, and for the same
+reason, he omitted to show what was the relation between these thoughts
+and those symbolic representations, and how it happened that the one came
+to be expressed by the other."
+
+The next development of biblical criticism was the mythical mode of
+interpretation in which are prominent the names of Gabler, Schelling,
+Bauer, Vater, De Wette, and others. These critics among them set
+themselves the difficult task of classifying the Bible narratives under
+the heads of three kinds of myths: historical myths, philosophical myths,
+and poetical myths. The first were "narratives of real events colored by
+the light of antiquity, which confounded the divine and the human, the
+natural and the supernatural"; the second, "such as clothe in the garb of
+historical narrative a simple thought, a precept, or an idea of the time";
+the third, "historical and philosophical myths partly blended together and
+partly embellished by the creations of the imagination, in which the
+original fact or idea is almost obscured by the veil which the fancy of
+the poet has woven around it."
+
+This sort of interpretation, first applied to the Old Testament, was later
+used in sifting history from myth to the New Testament.
+
+It will be seen that it has something in common with both the previously
+opposed views. The mythical interpretation agrees with the old allegorical
+view in so far that they both relinquish historical reality in favor of
+some inherent truth or religious conception of which the historical
+semblance is merely the shell. On the other hand it agrees with the
+rationalistic view in the fact that it really gives a natural explanation
+of the process of the growth of myths and legends in human society.
+Immediate divine agency controls in the allegorical view, the spirit of
+individuals or of society controls in the mythical view.
+
+Neither the out-and-out rationalists nor the orthodox students of the
+Bible approved of this new mode of interpretation, which was more or less
+the outcome of the study of the sacred books of other religions. In 1835,
+however, appeared an epoch-making book which subjected the New Testament
+to the most elaborate criticism based upon mythical and legendary
+interpretation. This was the "Life of Jesus, Critically Examined," by Dr.
+David Friedrich Strauss. This book caused a great stir in the theological
+world of Germany. Strauss was dismissed from his professorship in the
+University of Tübingen in consequence of it. Not only this, but in 1839,
+when he was appointed professor of Church History and Divinity at the
+University of Zurich, he was compelled at once to resign, and the
+administration which appointed him was overthrown. This veritable bomb
+thrown into the world of theology was translated by George Eliot, and
+published in England in 1846.
+
+Through this translation the most advanced German thought must have become
+familiar to many outside the pale of the professional scholar, and among
+them was, doubtless, the poet Browning, if indeed he had not already
+become familiar with it in the original. When the content and the thought
+of Browning's poems upon religious subjects are examined, it becomes
+certain that he was familiar with the whole trend of biblical criticism in
+the first half of the century and of its effect upon certain of the
+orthodox churchmen, and that with full consciousness he brought forward in
+his religious poems, not didactically, but often by the subtlest
+indirections, his own attitude toward the problems raised in this
+department of scientific historical inquiry.
+
+Some of the problems which occupied his attention, such as that in "The
+Death in the Desert," are directly traceable to the influence of Strauss's
+book. Whether he knew of Strauss's argument or not when he wrote "Saul,"
+his treatment of the story of David and Saul is not only entirely in
+sympathy with the creed of the German school of mythical interpreters, but
+the poet himself becomes one of the myth makers in the series of
+prophets--that is, he takes the idea, the Messianic idea, poetically
+embellishes an old tradition, making it glow with humanness, throws into
+that idea not only a content beyond that which David could have dreamed
+of, but suggests a purely psychical origin of the Messianic idea itself in
+keeping with his own thought on the subject.
+
+The history of the origin and growth of the Messianic ideal as traced by
+the most modern Jewish critics claims it to have been a slow evolution in
+the minds of the prophets. In Genesis it appears as the prophecy of a time
+to come of universal happiness promised to Abraham, through whose seed all
+the peoples of the earth shall be blessed, because they had hearkened unto
+the voice of God. From a family ideal in Abraham it passed on to being a
+tribal ideal with Jacob, and with the prophets it became a national ideal,
+an aspiration toward individual happiness and a noble national life. Not
+until the time of Isaiah is a special agent mentioned who is to be the
+instrument by means of which the blessing is to be fulfilled, and there we
+read this prophecy: "There shall sprout forth a shoot from the stem of
+Jesse, upon whom will rest the spirit of Yahveh, the spirit of wisdom
+and understanding, of counsel and strength, of the knowledge and fear of
+God. He will not judge according to appearance, nor will he according to
+hearsay. He will govern in righteousness the poor, and judge with equity
+the humble of the earth. He will smite the mighty with the rod of his
+mouth, and the wicked with the breath of his lips."
+
+The ideal expressed here of a great and wise national ruler who would
+bring about the realization of liberty, justice and peace to the Hebrew
+nation, and not only to them but to all mankind, becomes in the prophetic
+vision of Daniel a mystic being. "I saw in the visions of night, and
+behold, with the clouds of heaven came down as a likeness of the son of
+man. He stepped forward to the ancient of days. To him was given dominion,
+magnificence and rule. And all the peoples, nations and tongues did homage
+to him. His empire is an eternal empire and his realm shall never cease."
+
+In "Saul" Browning makes David the type of the prophetic faculty in its
+complete development. His vision is of an ideal which was not fully
+unfolded until the advent of Jesus himself--the ideal not merely of the
+mythical political liberator but of the spiritual saviour, who through
+infinite love would bring redemption and immortality to mankind. David
+in the poem essays to cheer Saul with the thought of the greatness that
+will live after him in the memory of others, but his own passionate desire
+to give something better than this to Saul awakens in him the assurance
+that God must be as full of love and compassion as he is. Thus Browning
+explains the sudden awakening of David, not as a divine revelation from
+without, but as a natural growth of the human spirit Godward. This new
+perception of values produces the ecstasy during which David sees his
+visions, the "witnesses, cohorts" about him, "angels, powers, the
+unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware."
+
+This whole conception was developed by Browning from the single phrase in
+I Samuel: "And David came to Saul, and stood before him: and he loved him
+greatly." In thus making David prophesy of an ideal which had not been
+evolved at his time, Browning indulges in what the biblical critic would
+call prophecy after the fact, and so throws himself in on the side of the
+mythical interpreters of the Bible.
+
+He has taken a historical narrative, embellished it poetically as in the
+imaginary accounts of the songs sung by David to Saul, and given it a
+philosophical content belonging on its objective side to the dawn of
+Christianity in the coming of Jesus himself and on its subjective side to
+his (the poet's) own time--that is, the idea of internal instead of
+external revelation--one of the ideas about which has been waged the
+so-called conflict of Science and Religion as it was understood by some of
+the most prominent thinkers of the latter half of the century. In this,
+again, it will be seen that Browning was in the van of the thought of the
+century, and still more was he in the van in the psychological tinge which
+he gives to David's experience. Professor William James himself could not
+better have portrayed a case of religious ecstasy growing out of genuine
+exaltation of thought than the poet has in David's experience.
+
+This poem undoubtedly sheds many rays of light upon the feelings, at the
+time, of its writer. While he was a profound believer in the spiritual
+nature and needs of man, he was evidently not opposed to the contemporary
+methods of biblical criticism as applied to the prophecies of the Old
+Testament, for has he not himself worked in accord with the light such
+criticism had thrown upon the origin of prophecy? Furthermore, the poem is
+not only an instance of his belief in the supremacy of the human spirit,
+but it distinctly repudiates the Comtian ideal of a religion of humanity,
+and of an immortality existing only in the memory of others. The Comte
+philosophy growing out of a material conception of the universe and a
+product of scientific thought has been one of the strong influences
+through the whole of the nineteenth century in sociology and religion.
+While it has worked much good in developing a deeper interest in the
+social life of man, it has proved altogether unsatisfactory and barren as
+a religious ideal, though there are minds which seem to derive some sort
+of forlorn comfort from this religion of positivism--from such hopes as
+may be inspired by the worship of Humanity "as a continuity and solidarity
+in time" without "any special existence, more largely composed of the dead
+than of the living," by the thought of an immortality in which we shall be
+reunited with the remembrance of our "grandsires" like Tyltyl and Mytyl in
+Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird."
+
+Here, as always, the poet throws in his weight on the side of the
+paramount worth of the individual, and of a conception of life which
+demands that the individual shall have a future world in which to overcome
+the flaws and imperfections incident to earthly life.
+
+Although, as I have tried to show, this poem undoubtedly bears witness to
+Browning's awareness to the thought currents of the day, it is couched in
+a form so dramatic, and in a language so poetic, that it seems like a
+spontaneous outburst of belief in which feeling alone had played a part.
+Certainly, whatever thoughts upon the subject may have been stowed away in
+the subconscious regions of the poet's mind, they well up here in a
+fountain of pure inspiration, carrying the thought forward on the wings of
+the poet's own spirit.
+
+Poems reflecting several phases of the turmoil of religious opinion rife
+in mid-century England are "Christmas Eve" and "Easter Day." Baffling they
+are, even misleading to any one who is desirous of finding out the exact
+attitude of the poet's mind, for example, upon the rival doctrines of a
+Methodist parson and a German biblical critic.
+
+The Methodist Chapel and the German University might be considered as
+representative of the extremes of thought in the more or less prescribed
+realm of theology, which largely through the influence of the filtering in
+of scientific and philosophic thought had divided itself into many sects.
+
+Within the Church of England itself there were high church and low
+church, broad church and Latitudinarian, into whose different shades of
+opinion it is not needful to enter here. Outside of the Established Church
+were the numerous dissenters, including Congregationalists, Baptists,
+Quakers, Methodists, Swedenborgians, Unitarians, and numerous others.
+
+There was one broad line of division between the Established Church and
+the dissenting bodies. In the first was inherent the ancient principle of
+authority, while the principle of self-government in matters of faith
+guided all the dissenters in their search for the light.
+
+It is not surprising that with so many differing shades of opinion within
+the bosom of the Anglican Church it should, in the earlier half of the
+century, have lost its grip upon not only the people at large, but upon
+many of its higher intellects. The principle of authority seemed to be
+tottering to its fall. In this crisis the Roman Catholic Church exercised
+a peculiar fascination upon men of intellectual endowment who, fearing the
+direction in which their intellect might lead them, turned to that church
+where the principle of authority kept itself firmly rooted by summarily
+dismissing any one who might question it. It is of interest to remember
+that at the date when this poem was written the Tractarian Movement, in
+which was conspicuous the Oxford group of men, had succeeded in carrying
+over four hundred clergymen and laity into the Catholic Church.
+
+Those who were unafraid followed the lead of German criticism and French
+materialism, but the large mass of common people found in Methodism the
+sort of religious guidance which it craved.
+
+To this sect has been attributed an unparalleled influence in the moral
+development of England. By rescuing multitudes from ignorance and from
+almost the degradation of beasts, and by fostering habits of industry and
+thrift, Methodism became a chief factor in building up a great,
+intelligent and industrious middle-class. Its influence has been felt even
+in the Established Church, and as its enthusiastic historians have pointed
+out, England might have suffered the political and religious convulsions
+inaugurated by the French Revolution if it had not been for the saving
+grace of Methodism.
+
+Appealing at first to the poor and lowly, suffering wrong and persecution
+with its founder, Wesley, it was so flexible in its constitution that
+after the death of Wesley it broadened out and differentiated in a way
+that made it adaptable to very varied human needs. In consequence of this
+it finally became a genuine power in the Church and State of Great
+Britain.
+
+The poem "Christmas Eve" becomes much more understandable when these facts
+about Methodism are borne in mind--facts which were evidently in the
+poet's mind, although the poem itself has the character of a symbolic
+rather than a personal utterance. The speaker might be regarded as a type
+of the religious conscience of England. In spite of whatever direct
+visions of the divine such a type of conscience may gain through the
+contemplation of nature and the revelations of the human heart, its
+relations to the past cause it to feel the need of some sectarian form of
+religion--a sort of inherited need to be orthodox in one form or another.
+This religious conscience has its artistic side; it can clothe its inborn
+religious instincts in exquisite imaginative vision. Also, it has its
+clear-sighted reasoning side. This is able unerringly to put its finger
+upon any flaw of doctrine or reasoning in the forms of religion it
+contemplates. Hence, Catholic doctrine, which was claiming the allegiance
+of those who were willing to put their troublesome intellects to sleep
+and accept authority where religion was concerned, does not satisfy this
+keen analyzer. Nor yet is it able to see any religious reality in such a
+myth of Christ rehabilitated as an ethical prophet as the Göttingen
+professor constructs in a manner so reminiscent of a passage in Strauss's
+"Life of Jesus," where he is describing the opinions of the rationalists'
+school of criticism, that a comparison with that passage is enlightening.
+
+Having swept away completely the supernatural basis of religion, the
+rationalist is able still to conceive of Jesus as a divine Messenger, a
+special favorite and charge of the Deity:
+
+    "He had implanted in him by God the natural conditions only of that
+    which he was ultimately to become, and his realization of this destiny
+    was the result of his own spontaneity. His admirable wisdom he
+    acquired by the judicious application of his intellectual powers and
+    the conscientious use of all the aids within his reach; his moral
+    greatness, by the zealous culture of his moral dispositions, the
+    restraint of his sensual inclinations and passions, and a scrupulous
+    obedience to the voice of his conscience; and on these alone rested
+    all that was exalted in his personality, all that was encouraging in
+    his example."
+
+The difficulty to this order of mind of the direct personal revelation
+lies in the fact that it is convincing only to those who experience it,
+having no basis in authority, and may even for them lose its force.
+
+What then is the conclusion forced upon this English religious conscience?
+Simply this: that, though failing both from the intellectual and the
+æsthetic standpoint, the dissenting view was the only religious view of
+the time possessing any genuine vitality. It represented the progressive,
+democratic religious force which was then in England bringing religion
+into the lives of the people with a positiveness long lost to the Anglican
+Church. The religious conscience of England was growing through this
+Methodist movement. This is why the speaker of the poem chooses at last
+that form of worship which he finds in the little chapel.
+
+While no one can doubt that the exalted mysticism based upon feeling, and
+the large tolerance of the poem, reflect most nearly the poet's personal
+attitude, on the other hand it is made clear that in his opinion the
+dissenting bodies possessed the forms of religious orthodoxy most potent
+at the time for good.
+
+In "Easter Day," the doubts and fears which have racked the hearts and
+minds of hundreds and thousands of individuals, as the result of the
+increase of scientific knowledge and biblical criticism are given more
+personal expression. The discussion turns principally upon the relation of
+the finite to the Infinite, a philosophical problem capable of much
+hair-splitting controversy, solved here in keeping with the prevailing
+thought of the century--namely, that the finite is relative and that this
+relativity is the proof of the Infinite.
+
+The boldness of this statement, one such as might be found in the pages of
+Spencer, is by Browning elaborated with pictorial and emotional power.
+Only by a marvelous vision is the truth brought home to the speaker that
+the beauties and joys of earth are not all-sufficient, but that they are
+in the poet's speech but partial beauty, though through this very
+limitation they become "a pledge of beauty in its plenitude," gleams
+"meant to sting with hunger for full light." It is not, however, until
+this see-er of visions perceives the highest gleam of earth that he is
+able to realize through the spiritual voice of his vision that the nature
+of the Infinite is in its essence Love, the supreme manifestation of which
+was symbolized in the death and resurrection of Christ.
+
+This revelation is nevertheless rendered null by the man's conviction that
+the vision was merely such "stuff as dreams are made on." At the end as
+at the beginning he finds it hard to be a Christian.
+
+His vision, which thus symbolizes his own course of emotionalized
+reasoning, brings hope but not conviction. Like the type in "Christmas
+Eve," conviction can come to him only through a belief in supernatural
+revelation. He is evidently a man of broad intellectual endowment, who
+cannot, as the Tractarians did, lay his mind asleep, and rest in the
+authority of a church, nor yet can he be satisfied with the unconscious
+anthropomorphism of the sectarian. He doubts his own reasoning attempts to
+formulate religious doctrines, he doubts even the revelations of his own
+mystic states of consciousness; hence there is nothing for him but to
+flounder on through life as best he can, hoping, fearing, doubting, as
+many a serious mind has done owing to the nineteenth-century reaction
+against the supernatural dogmas of Christianity. Like others of his ilk,
+he probably stayed in the Anglican Church and weakened it through his
+latitudinarianisms.
+
+A study in religious consciousness akin to this is that of Bishop
+Blougram. Here we have not a generalized type as in "Christmas Eve," nor
+an imaginary individual as in "Easter Day," but an actual study of a real
+man, it being no secret that Cardinal Wiseman was the inspiration for the
+poem.
+
+Wiseman's influence as a Catholic in the Tractarian movement was a
+powerful one, and in the poet's dissection of his psychology an attempt is
+made to present the reasoning by means of which he made his appeal to less
+independent thinkers. With faith as the basis of religion, doubt serves as
+a moral spur, since the will must exercise itself in keeping doubt
+underfoot. Browning, himself, might agree that aspiration toward faith was
+one of the tests of its truth, he might also consider doubt as a spur to
+greater aspiration, but these ideals would connote something different to
+him from what he makes them mean to Blougram. The poet's aspiration would
+be toward a belief in Omniscient Love and Power, his doubts would grow out
+of his inability to make this ideal tally with the sin and evil he beholds
+in life. Blougram's consciousness is on a lower plane. His aspiration is
+to believe in the dogmas of the Church, his doubts arise from an
+intellectual fear that the dogmas may not be true. Where Browning seems to
+miss comprehension of such a nature as Blougram's is in failing to
+recognize that on his own plane of consciousness genuine feeling and the
+perception of beauty play at least as large a part in the basis of his
+faith as utilitarian and instinctive reasoning do. While this poem shows
+in its references to the scientific theories of the origin of morals and
+its allusions to Strauss, as well as in the indirect portrayal of
+Gigadibs, the man emancipated from the Church, how entirely familiar the
+poet was with the currents of religious and scientific thought, it falls
+short as a fair analysis of a man who is acknowledged to have wielded a
+tremendous religious influence upon Englishmen of the caliber of Cardinal
+Newman, Kingsley, Arnold, and others.
+
+If we leave out of account its connection with a special individual, the
+poem stands, however, as a delightful study of a type in which is depicted
+in passingly clever fashion methods of reasoning compounded of tantalizing
+gleams of truth and darkening sophistication.
+
+The poem which shows most completely the effect of contemporary biblical
+criticism on the poet is "A Death in the Desert." It has been said to be
+an attempt to meet the destructive criticism of Strauss. The setting of
+the poem is wonderfully beautiful, while the portrayal of the mystical
+quality of John's reasoning is so instinct with religious feeling that it
+must be a wary reader indeed who does not come from the reading of this
+poem with the conviction that here, at least, Browning has declared
+himself unflinchingly on the side of supernatural Christianity in the face
+of the battering rams of criticism and the projectiles of science.
+
+But if he be a wary reader, he will discover that the argument for
+supernaturalism only amounts to this--and it is put in the mouth of John,
+who had in his youth been contemporary with Christ--namely, that miracles
+had been performed when only by means of them faith was possible, though
+miracles were probably not what those who believed in them thought they
+were. Here is the gist of his defence of the supernatural:
+
+    "I say, that as a babe, you feed awhile,
+  Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself,
+  So, minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth:
+  When they can eat, babes'-nurture is withdrawn.
+  I fed the babe whether it would or no:
+  I bid the boy or feed himself or starve.
+  I cried once, 'That ye may believe in Christ,
+  Behold this blind man shall receive his sight!'
+  I cry now, 'Urgest thou, _for I am shrewd
+  And smile at stories how John's word could cure--
+  Repeat that miracle and take my faith_?'
+  I say, that miracle was duly wrought
+  When save for it no faith was possible.
+  Whether a change were wrought in the shows o' the world,
+  Whether the change came from our minds which see
+  Of shows o' the world so much as and no more
+  Than God wills for his purpose,--(what do I
+  See now, suppose you, there where you see rock
+  Round us?)--I know not; such was the effect,
+  So faith grew, making void more miracles,
+  Because too much they would compel, not help.
+  I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ
+  Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
+  All questions in the earth and out of it,
+  And has so far advanced thee to be wise.
+  Wouldst thou improve this to re-prove the proved?
+  In life's mere minute, with power to use the proof,
+  Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung?
+  Thou hast it; use it and forthwith, or die!"
+
+The important truth as seen by John's dying eyes is that faith in a
+beautiful ideal has been born in the human soul. Whether the accounts of
+the exact means by which this faith arose were literally true is of little
+importance, the faith itself is no less God-given, as another passage will
+make clear:
+
+  "Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect
+  He could not, what he knows now, know at first;
+  What he considers that he knows to-day,
+  Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown;
+  Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns
+  Because he lives, which is to be a man,
+  Set to instruct himself by his past self;
+  First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn,
+  Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind,
+  Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.
+  God's gift was that man should conceive of truth
+  And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake
+  As midway help till he reach fact indeed."
+
+The defence of Christianity in this poem reminds one very strongly of the
+theology of Schleiermacher, a résumé of which the poet might have found in
+Strauss's "Life of Jesus." Although Schleiermacher accepted and even went
+beyond the negative criticism of the rationalists against the doctrines of
+the Church, he sought to retain the essential aspects of positive
+Christianity. He starts out from the consciousness of the Christian, "from
+that internal experience resulting to the individual from his connection
+with the Christian community, and he thus obtains a material which, as its
+basis of feeling, is more flexible and to which it is easier to give
+dialectically a form that satisfies science."
+
+Again, "If we owe to him [Jesus] the continual strengthening of the
+consciousness of God within us, this consciousness must have existed in
+him in absolute strength, so that it or God in the form of the
+consciousness was the only operative force within him." In other words, in
+Jesus was the supreme manifestation of God in human consciousness. This
+truth, first grasped by means which seemed miraculous, is finally
+recognized in man's developing consciousness as a consummation brought
+about by natural means. John's reasoning in the poem can lead to no other
+conclusion than this.
+
+Schleiermacher's theology has, of course, been objected to on the ground
+that if this incarnation of God was possible in one man, there is no
+reason why it should not frequently be possible. This is the orthodox
+objection, and it is voiced in the comment added by "One" at the end of
+the poem showing the weakness of John's argument from the strictly
+orthodox point of view.
+
+With regard to the miracles being natural events supernaturally
+interpreted--that is an explanation familiar to the biblical critic, and
+one which the psychologist of to-day is ready to support with numberless
+proofs and analyses. How much this poem owes to hints derived from
+Strauss's book is further illustrated by the "Glossa of Theotypas," which
+is borrowed from Origen, whose theory is referred to by Strauss in his
+Introduction as follows: "Origen attributes a threefold meaning to the
+Scriptures, corresponding with his distribution of the human being into
+three parts, the liberal sense answering to the body, the moral to the
+soul, and the mystical to the spirit."
+
+On the whole, the poem appears to be influenced more by the actual
+contents of Strauss's book than to be deliberately directed against his
+thought, for John's own reasoning when his feelings are in abeyance might
+be deduced from more than one passage in this work wherein are passed in
+review the conclusions of divers critics of the naturalist and rationalist
+schools of thought.
+
+The poem "An Epistle" purports to give a nearly contemporary opinion by an
+Arab physician upon the miracle of the raising of Lazarus. We have here,
+on the one hand, the Arab's natural explanation of the miracle as an
+epileptic trance prolonged some three days, and Lazarus's interpretation
+of his cure as a supernatural event. Though absolutely skeptical, the Arab
+cannot but be impressed with the beliefs of Lazarus, because of their
+revelation of God as a God of Love. Thus Browning brings out the power of
+the truth in the underlying ideas of Christianity, whatever skepticism may
+be felt as to the letter of it.
+
+The effect of the trance upon the nature of Lazarus is paralleled to-day
+by accounts, given by various persons, of their sensations when they
+have sunk into unconsciousness nigh unto death. I remember reading of a
+case in which a man described his feeling of entire indifference as to the
+relations of life, his joy in a sense of freedom and ineffable beauty
+toward which he seemed to be flying through space, and his disinclination
+to be resuscitated, a process which his spirit was watching from its
+heights with fear lest his friends should bring him back to earth. This
+higher sort of consciousness seems to have evolved in some people to-day
+without the intervention of such an experience as that of Lazarus or one
+such as that of the above subject of the Society for Psychical Research.
+
+In describing Lazarus to have reached such an outlook upon life, Browning
+again ranges himself with the most advanced psychological thought of the
+century. Hear William James: "The existence of mystical states absolutely
+overthrows the pretension of non-mystical states to be the sole and
+ultimate dictators of what we may believe. As a rule, mystical states
+merely add a supersensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data of
+consciousness. They are excitements like the emotions of love or ambition,
+gifts to our spirit by means of which facts already objectively before
+us fall into a new expressiveness and make a new connection with our
+active life. They do not contradict these facts as such, or deny anything
+that our senses have immediately seized. It is the rationalistic critic
+rather who plays the part of denier in the controversy, and his denials
+have no strength, for there never can be a state of facts to which new
+meaning may not truthfully be added, provided the mind ascend to a more
+enveloping point of view. It must always remain an open question whether
+mystical states may not possibly be such superior points of view, windows
+through which the mind looks out upon a more extensive and inclusive
+world. The difference of the views seen from the different mystical
+windows need not prevent us from entertaining this supposition. The wider
+world would in that case prove to have a mixed constitution like that of
+this world, that is all. It would have its celestial and its infernal
+regions, its tempting and its saving moments, its valid experiences and
+its counterfeit ones, just as our world has them; but it would be a wider
+world all the same. We should have to use its experiences by selecting and
+subordinating and substituting just as is our custom in this ordinary
+naturalistic world; we should be liable to error just as we are now; yet
+the counting in of that wider world of meanings, and the serious dealing
+with it, might, in spite of all the perplexity, be indispensable stages in
+our approach to the final fulness of the truth."
+
+The vision of Lazarus belongs to the beatific realm, and the naturalistic
+Arab has a longing for similar strange vision, though he calls it a
+madman's, for--
+
+  "So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too--
+  So, through the thunder comes a human voice
+  Saying, 'O heart I made, a heart beats here!
+  Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
+  Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,
+  But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
+  And thou must love me who have died for thee.'"
+
+A survey of Browning's contributions to the theological differences of the
+mid-century would not be complete without some reference to "Caliban" and
+"Childe Roland." In the former, the absurdities of anthropomorphism, of
+the God conceived in the likeness of man, are presented with dramatic and
+ironical force, but, at the same time, is shown the aspiration to
+something beyond, which has carried dogma through all the centuries,
+forward to ever purer and more spiritual conceptions of the absolute. In
+the second, though it be a purely romantic ballad, there seems to be
+symbolized the scientific knight-errant of the century, who, with belief
+and faith completely annihilated by the science which allows for no realm
+of knowledge beyond its own experimental reach, yet considers life worth
+living. Despite the complex interpretations which have issued from the
+oracular tripods of Browning Societies, one cannot read the last lines of
+this poem--
+
+  "Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
+  And blew, '_Childe Roland to the dark Tower came_'"--
+
+without thinking of the splendid courage in the face of disillusionment of
+such men of the century as Huxley, Tyndall or Clifford.
+
+When we ask, where is Browning in all this diversity of theological
+opinion? we can only answer that beyond an ever-present undercurrent of
+religious aspiration there is no possibility of pinning the poet to any
+given dogmas. Everywhere we feel the dramatic artist. In "Paracelsus" the
+philosophy of life was that of the artist whose adoration finds its
+completion in beauty and joy; now the poet himself is the artist
+experiencing as Aprile did, this beauty and joy in a boundless sympathy
+with many forms of mystical religious ecstasy. Every one of these poems
+presents a conflict between the doubts born of some phase of theological
+controversy and the exaltation of moments or periods of ecstatic vision,
+and though nowhere is dogmatic truth asserted with positiveness,
+everywhere we feel a mystic sympathy with the moving power of religious
+aspiration, a sympathy which belongs to a form of consciousness perhaps
+more inclusive than the religious--namely, a poetic consciousness, able at
+once to sympathize with the content and to present the forms of mystic
+vision belonging to various phases of human consciousness.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE CENTURY'S END: PROMISE OF PEACE
+
+
+Passing onward from this mid-century phase of Browning's interest in what
+I have called the battle of the mind and the spirit, we find him in his
+later poems taking up the subject in its broader aspects, more as he
+treated it in "Paracelsus," yet with a marked difference in temper. God is
+no longer conceived of merely as a divine creator, joying in the wonder
+and beauty of his creations. The ideal of the artist has been modified by
+the observation of the thinker and the feeling induced by human rather
+than by artistic emotion. Life's experiences have shown to the more
+humanly conscious Browning that the problem of evil is not one to be so
+easily dismissed. The scientist may point out that evil is but lack of
+development, and the lover and artist may exult when he sees the wonderful
+processes of nature and mind carrying forward development until he can
+picture a time when the evil shall become null and void, but the human,
+feeling being sees the misery and the unloveliness of evil. It does not
+satisfy him to know that it is lack of development or the outcome of lack
+of development, nor yet that it will grow less as time goes on he ponders
+the problem, "why is evil permitted, how is it to be harmonized with the
+existence of a universe planned upon a scheme which he believes to be the
+outcome of a source all-powerful and all-loving!"
+
+About this problem and its corollary, the conception of the infinite,
+Browning's latter-day thought revolves as it did in his middle years about
+the basis of religious belief.
+
+It is one of the strange freaks of criticism that many admirers of
+Browning's earlier work have failed to see the importance of his later
+poems, especially "Ferishtah's Fancies," and "The Parleyings," not only as
+expressions of the poet's own spiritual growth, but as showing his mental
+grasp of the problems which the advance of nineteenth-century scientific
+thought brought to the fore in the last days of the century.
+
+The date at which various critics have declared that Browning ceased to
+write poetry might be considered an index of the time when that critic's
+powers became atrophied. No less a person than Edmund Gosse is of the
+opinion that since 1868 the poet's books were chiefly valuable as keeping
+alive popular interest in him, and as leading fresh generations of readers
+to what he had already published. Fortunately it has long been admitted
+that Homer sometimes nods, though not with such awful effect as was said
+to attend the nods of Jove. Hence, in spite of Mr. Gosse's undoubted
+eminence as a critic, we may dare to assume that in this particular
+instance he fell into the ancient and distinguished trick of nodding.
+
+If Mr. Gosse were right, it would practically put on a par with a mere
+advertising scheme many poems which have now become household favorites.
+Take, for example, "Hervé Riel." Think of the blue-eyed Breton hero whom
+all the world has learned to love through Browning, tolerated simply as an
+index finger to "The Pied Piper of Hamelin." Take, too, such poems, as
+"Donald." This man's dastardly sportsmanship is so vividly portrayed that
+it has the power to arouse strong emotion in strong men, who have been
+known literally to break down in the middle of it through excess of
+feeling; "Ivan Ivanovitch," in which is embodied such fear and horror that
+weak hearts cannot stand the strain of hearing it read; the story of the
+dog Tray, who rescued a drowning doll with the same promptitude as he
+did a drowning child--at the relation of whose noble deeds the eyes of
+little children grow eager with excitement and sympathy. And where is
+there in any poet's work a more vivid bit of tragedy than "A Forgiveness?"
+
+And would not an unfillable gap be left in the ranks of our friends of the
+imaginative world if Balaustion were blotted out?--the exquisite lyric
+girl, brave, tender and with a mind in which wisdom and wit are fair play
+fellows.
+
+As Carlyle might say, "Verily, verily, Mr. Gosse, thou hast out-Homered
+Homer, and thy nod hath taken upon itself very much the semblance of a
+snore."
+
+These and many others which might be mentioned since the date when Mr.
+Gosse autocratically put up the bars to the poet's genius are now
+universally accepted. There are others, however, such as "The Red Cotton
+Night-cap Country," "The Inn Album," "Aristophanes' Apology," "Fifine at
+the Fair," which are liable at any time to attacks from atrophied critics,
+and among these are the groups of poems which are to form the center of
+our present discussion.
+
+Without particularizing either critics or criticism it may be said that
+criticism of these poems divides itself into the usual three
+branches--one which objects to their philosophy, one which objects to
+their art, one which finds them difficult of comprehension at all. This
+last criticism may easily be disposed of by admitting it is in part true.
+The mind whose highest reaches of poetic inspiration are ministered unto
+by such simple and easily understandable lyrics as "Twinkle, twinkle,
+little star," might not at once grasp the significance of the Parleying
+with George Bubb Dodington. Indeed, it may be surmised that some minds
+might sing upon the starry heights with Hegel and fathom the equivalence
+of being and non-being, and yet be led into a slough of despond by this
+same cantankerous George.
+
+But a poetical slough of despond may be transfigured in the twinkling of
+an eye--after a proper amount of study and hard thinking--into an elevated
+plateau with prospects upon every side, grand or terrible or smiling.
+
+Are we never to feel spurred to any poetical pleasure more vigorous than
+dilly-dallying with Keats while we feast our eyes upon the wideness of the
+seas? or lazily floating in a lotus land with Tennyson, perhaps, among the
+meadows of the Musketaquid, in canoes with silken cushions? Beauty and
+peace are the reward of such poetical pleasures. They fall upon the spirit
+like the "sweet sound that breathes upon a bank of violets, stealing and
+giving odor," but shall we never return from the land where it is always
+afternoon? Is it only in such a land as this that we realize the true
+power of emotion? Rather does it conduce to the slumber of emotion, for
+progress is the law of feeling as it is the law of life, and many times we
+feel--yes, feel--with tremendous rushes of enthusiasm like climbing
+Matterhorns with great iron nails in our shoes, with historical and
+archæological and philosophical Alpen-stocks in our hands, and when we
+reach the summit what unsuspected beauties become ours!
+
+Then let us hear no more of the critic who wishes Browning had ceased to
+write in 1868 or at any other date. It may be said of him, not as of
+Whitman, "he who reads my book touches a man," but "he who reads my poems
+from start to finish grasps the life and thought of a century."
+
+There will be no exaggeration in claiming that these two series of poems
+form the keystone to Browning's whole work. They are like a final
+synthesis of the problems of existence which he has previously portrayed
+and analyzed from myriad points of view in his dramatic presentation of
+character and his dramatic interpretations of spiritual moods.
+
+In "Pauline," before the poet's personality became more or less merged in
+that of his characters, we obtain a direct glimpse of the poet's own
+artistic temperament, and may literally acquaint ourselves with those
+qualities which were to be a large influence in moulding his work.
+
+As described by himself, the poet of "Pauline" was
+
+  "Made up of an intensest life,
+  Of a most clear idea of consciousness
+  Of self, distinct from all its qualities,
+  From all affections, passions, feelings, powers;
+  And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all:
+  But linked in me to self-supremacy,
+  Existing as a center to all things,
+  Most potent to create and rule and call
+  Upon all things to minister to it."
+
+This sense of an over-consciousness is the mark of an objective poet--one
+who sympathizes with all the emotions and aspirations of
+humanity--interprets their actions through the light of this sympathy, and
+at the same time keeps his own individuality distinct.
+
+The poet of this poem discovers that he can no longer lose himself with
+enthusiasm in any phase of life; but what does that mean to a soul
+constituted as his? It means that the way has been cleared for the birth
+of that greater, broader love of the fully developed artist soul which,
+while entering into sympathy with all phases of life, finds its true
+complement only in an ideal of absolute Love.
+
+This picture of the artist aspiring toward the absolute by means of his
+large human sympathy may be supplemented by the theory of man's relation
+to the universe involved in "Paracelsus" as we have seen.
+
+From this point in his work, Browning, like the Hindu Brahma, becomes
+manifest not as himself, but in his creations. The poet whose portrait is
+painted for us in "Pauline" is the same poet who sympathetically presents
+a whole world of human experiences to us, and the philosopher whose
+portrait is drawn in "Paracelsus" is the same who interprets these human
+experiences in the light of the great life theories therein presented.
+
+But as the creations of Brahma return into himself, so the human
+experiences Browning has entered into artistic sympathy with return to
+enrich his completed view of the problems of life, when, like his own
+Rabbi Ben Ezra, he reaches the last of life for which the first was
+planned in these "Fancies" and "Parleyings."
+
+Though these two groups of poems undoubtedly express the poet's own mature
+conclusions, they yet preserve the dramatic form. Several things are
+gained in this way: First, the poems are saved from didacticism, for the
+poet expresses his opinions as an individual, and not in his own person as
+a seer, trying to implant his theories in the minds of disciples. Second,
+variety is given and the mind stimulated by having opposite points of view
+presented, while the thought is infused with a certain amount of emotional
+force through the heat of argument.
+
+It has frequently been objected, not only of these poems, but upon general
+grounds, that philosophical and ethical problems are not fit subjects for
+treatment in poetry. There is one point which the critic of æsthetics
+seems in danger of never realizing--namely, that the law of evolution is
+differentiation, in art as well as in cosmic, organic, and social life. It
+is just as prejudiced and unforeseeing in these days to limit poetry to
+this or that kind of a subject, or to say that nothing is dramatic which
+does not deal with immediate action, as it would have been for Homer to
+declare that no poem would ever be worthy the name that did not contain
+a catalogue of ships.
+
+These facts exist! We have dramas dealing merely with action, dramas in
+which character development is of prime importance; dramas wherein action
+and character are entirely synchronous; and those in which the action
+means more than appears upon the surface, like Hauptmann's "Sunken Bell,"
+or Ibsen's "Master Builder"; then why not dramas of thought and dramas of
+mood when the brain and heart become the stage of action instead of an
+actual stage.
+
+Surely such an extension of the possibilities of dramatic art is a
+development quite natural to the intellectual ferment of the nineteenth
+century. As the man in "Half Rome" says, "Facts are facts and lie not, and
+the question, 'How came that purse the poke o' you?' admits of no reply."
+
+By using the dramatic form, the poet has furthermore been enabled to give
+one a deep sense of the characteristics peculiar to the century. The
+latter half of Victorian England in its thought phases lives just as
+surely in these poems as Renaissance Italy in its art phases in "Fra Lippo
+Lippi," "Andrea del Sarto," and the rest; and this is true though the
+first series is cast in the form of Persian fables and the second in the
+form of "Parleyings" with worthies of past centuries.
+
+It may be worth while for the benefit of the reader not thoroughly
+familiar with these later poems to pass quickly in review the problems in
+them upon which Browning bends his poet's insight.
+
+Nothing bears upon the grounds of moral action more disastrously than
+blind fatalism, and while there have been many evil forms of this doctrine
+in the past there has probably been none worse than the modern form,
+because it seems to have sanction in the scientific doctrines of the
+conservation of energy, the persistence of heredity, and the survival of
+the fittest. Even the wise and the thoughtful with wills atrophied by
+scientific phases of fatalism allow themselves to drift upon what they
+call the laws of development, possessing evidently no realizing sense that
+the will of man, whether it be in the last analysis absolutely free or
+not, is a prime factor in the working of these laws. Such people will
+hesitate, therefore, to throw in their voices upon either side in the
+solution of great national problems, because, things being bound to follow
+the laws of development, what matters a single voice! Such arguments were
+frequently heard among the wise in our own country during the Cuban and
+Philippine campaigns. Upon this attitude of mind the poet gives his
+opinion in the first of "Ferishtah's Fancies," "The Eagle." It is a strong
+plea for the exercise of those human impulses that lead to action. The
+will to serve the world is the true force from God. Every man, though he
+be the last link in a chain of causes over which he had no control, can,
+at least, have a determining influence upon the direction in which the
+next link shall be forged. Ferishtah appears upon the scene, himself, a
+fatalist, leaving himself wholly in God's hands, until he is taught by the
+dream God sent him that man's part is to act as he saw the eagle act,
+succoring the helpless, not to play the part of the helpless birdlings.
+
+Another phase of the same thought is brought out in "A Camel Driver,"
+where the discussion turns upon punishment. The point is, if, as Ferishtah
+declares, the sinner is not to be punished eternally, then why should man
+trouble himself to punish him? Universalist doctrines are here put into
+the mouth of Ferishtah, and not a few modern philanthropists would agree
+with Ferishtah's questioners that punishment for sins (the manifestations
+of inherited tendencies for which the sinners are not responsible) is no
+longer admissible. Ferishtah's answer amounts to this. That no matter what
+causes for beneficent ends may be visible to the Divine mind in the
+allowance of the existence of sin, nor yet the fact that Divine love
+demands that punishment shall not be eternal; man must regard sin simply
+from the human point of view as absolute evil, and must will to work for
+its annihilation. It follows then that the punishing of a sinner is the
+means by which he may be taught to overcome the sin. There is the added
+thought, also, that the suffering of the conscience over the subtler sins
+which go unpunished is all the hell one needs.
+
+Another doctrine upon which the nineteenth-century belief in progress as
+the law of life has set its seal is that of the pursuit of happiness, or
+the striving for the greatest good of the whole number in which oneself is
+not to be excluded. With this doctrine Browning shows himself in full
+sympathy in "Two Camels," wherein Ferishtah contends that only through the
+development of individual happiness and the experiencing of many forms of
+joyousness can one help others to happiness and joyousness, while in "Plot
+Culture" the enjoyment of human emotion as a means of developing the soul
+is emphasized.
+
+The relation of good and evil in their broader aspects occupy the poet's
+attention in others of this group. Nineteenth-century thought brought
+about a readjustment of these relations. Good and evil as absolutely
+definable entities gave place to the doctrine that good and evil are
+relative terms, a phrase which we sometimes forget must be understood in
+two ways: first, that good and evil are relative to the state of society
+in which they exist. What may be good according to the ethics of a Fejee
+Islander would not hold in the civilized society of to-day. This is the
+evil of lack of development which in the long run becomes less. On the
+other hand, there is the evil of suffering and pain which it is more
+difficult to reconcile with the idea of omnipotent power. In "Mihrab
+Shah," Browning gives a solution of this problem in consonance with the
+idea that were it not for evil we should not have learned how to
+appreciate the good, to work for it, and, in doing so, bring about
+progress.
+
+To his pupil, worried over this problem, Ferishtah points out that evil in
+the form of bodily suffering has given rise to the beautiful sentiments of
+pity and sympathy. Having proved in this way that good really grows out of
+evil, there is still the query, shall evil be encouraged in order that
+good may be evolved? "No!" Ferishtah declares, man bound by man's
+conditions is obliged to estimate as "fair or foul right, wrong, good,
+evil, what man's faculty adjudges as such," therefore the man will do all
+he can to relieve the suffering or poor Mihrab Shah with a fig plaster.
+
+The final answers, then, which Browning gives to the ethical problems
+which grew out of the acceptance of modern scientific doctrines are, in
+brief, that man shall use that will-power of which he feels himself
+possessed--the power really distinguishing him from the brute creation--in
+working against whatever appears to him to be evil; while that good for
+which he shall work is the greatest happiness of all.
+
+In the remaining poems of the group we have the poet's mature word upon
+the philosophical doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, a doctrine
+which received the most elaborate demonstration from Herbert Spencer in
+many directions. It is insisted upon in "Cherries," "The Sun," in "A Bean
+Stripe also Apple Eating," and especially in that remarkable poem, "A
+Pillar at Sebzevar." That knowledge fails is the burden of these poems.
+Knowledge the golden is but lacquered ignorance, as gain to be
+mistrusted. Curiously enough, this contention of Browning's has been the
+cause of most of the criticisms against him as a thinker, yet the deepest
+thinkers of to-day as well as many in the past have held the opinion in
+some form or another that the intellect was unable to solve the mysterious
+problems of the universe. Even the metaphysicians who build their unstable
+air castles on _à priori_ ideas declare these ideas cannot be matters of
+mere intellectual perception, but must be intuitions of the higher reason.
+Browning, however, does not rest in the mere assertion that the intellect
+fails. From this truth, so disconcerting to many, he draws immense
+comfort. Though intellectual knowledge be mistrusted as gain, it is not to
+be mistrusted as means to gain, for through its very failure it becomes a
+promise of greater things.
+
+"Friend," quoth Ferishtah in "A Pillar of Sebzevar,"
+
+  "As gain--mistrust it! Nor as means to gain:
+  Lacquer we learn by: cast in firing-pot,
+  We learn--when what seemed ore assayed proves dross
+  Surelier true gold's worth, guess how purity
+  I' the lode were precious could one light on ore
+  Clarified up to test of crucible.
+  The prize is in the process: knowledge means
+  Ever-renewed assurance by defeat
+  That victory is somehow still to reach."
+
+For men with minds of the type of Spencer's this negative assurance of the
+Infinite is sufficient, but human beings as a rule will not rest satisfied
+with such cold abstractions. Though Job said thousands of years ago, "Who
+by searching can find out God," mankind still continues to search. They
+long to know something of the nature of the divine as well as to be
+assured of its existence. In this very act of searching Browning declares
+the divine becomes most directly manifest.
+
+From the earliest times of which we have any record man has been aspiring
+toward God. Many times has he thought he had found him, but with enlarged
+perceptions he discovered later that what he had found was only God's
+image built up out of his own human experiences.
+
+This search of man for the divine is described with great power and
+originality in the Fancy called "The Sun," under the symbol of the man who
+seeks the prime Giver that he may give thanks where it is due for a
+palatable fig. This search for God, Browning calls love, meaning by that
+the moving, aspiring force of the whole universe in its multifarious
+manifestations, from the love that goes forth in thanks for benefits
+received, through the aspiration of the artist toward beauty, of the
+lover toward human sympathy, even of the scientist toward knowledge, to
+the lover of humanity like Ferishtah, who declares, "I know nothing save
+that love I can, boundlessly, endlessly."
+
+The poet argues from this that if mankind has with ever-increasing fervor
+aspired toward a God of Love, and has ever developed toward broader
+conceptions of human love, it is only reasonable to infer that in his
+nature God has some attribute which corresponds to human love, though it
+transcend our most exalted imagining of it.
+
+At the end of the century a book was written in America in which an
+argument similar to this was used to prove the existence of God. This book
+was "Through Nature to God," by John Fiske, whose earlier work, "Cosmic
+Philosophy," did much to familiarize the American reading public with the
+evolutionary philosophy of Spencer.
+
+Fiske claimed that his theory was entirely original, yet no one familiar
+with the thought of Browning could fail to see the similarity of their
+points of view. Fiske based his proof upon analogies drawn from the
+evolution of organic life in following out the law of the adjustment of
+inner to outer relations. For example, since the eye has through æons
+of time gradually adjusted itself into harmony with light, why should not
+man's search for God be the gradual adjustment of the soul into harmony
+with the infinite spirit? This adjustment, as Browning expresses it, is
+that of human love to divine love.
+
+[Illustration: HERBERT SPENCER]
+
+Other modern thinkers, notably Schleiermacher in Germany and Shaftsbury in
+England, have placed the basis of religious truth in feeling. The idea is
+thus not a new one. Yet in Browning's treatment of it the conception has
+taken on new life, partly because of the intensity of conviction with
+which it is expounded in these later poems, and partly because of its
+having been so closely knit into the scientific thought of the century.
+
+Optimistically the thought is finally rounded out in "A Bean Stripe also
+Apple Eating," in which Ferishtah argues that life in spite of the evil in
+it seems to him on the whole good. He cannot believe that evil is not
+meant to serve a good purpose since he is so sure that God is infinite in
+love.
+
+From all this it will be seen that Browning accepts with Spencerians the
+negative proof of God growing out of the failure of intellect to grasp the
+realities underlying all phenomena, but adds to it the positive proof
+based upon emotion. The true basis of belief is the intuition of God
+that comes from the direct revelation of feeling in the human heart, which
+has been at once the motive force of the search for God and the basis of a
+conception of the nature of God.
+
+It was a stroke of genius on the part of the poet to present such problems
+in Persian guise, for Persia stands in Zoroastrianism for the dualism
+which Ferishtah with his progressive spirit decries in his recognition of
+the part evil plays in the development of good, and through Mahometanism
+for the Fatalism Ferishtah learned to cast from him. The Persian
+atmosphere is preserved throughout not only by the introduction constantly
+of Persian allusions traceable to the great Persian epic, "The Shah
+Nameh," but by the telling of fables in the Persian manner to point the
+morals intended.
+
+With the exception of the first Fancy, derived from a fable of Bidpai's,
+we have the poet's own word that all the others are inventions of his own.
+These clever stories make the poems lively reading in spite of their
+ethical content. Ferishtah is drawn with strong strokes. Wise and clever
+he stands before us, reminding us at times of Socrates--never at a loss
+for an answer no matter what bothersome questions his pupils may
+propound.
+
+If we see the thoughtful and brilliant Browning in the "Fancies" proper,
+we perhaps see even more clearly the emotional and passionate Browning in
+the lyrics which add variety and an unwonted charm to the whole. This
+feature is also borrowed from Persian form, an interesting example of
+which has been given to English readers in Edwin Arnold's "Gulistan" or
+"Rose Garden" of the poet Sa'di. Indeed Browning evidently derived the
+hint for his humorous prologue in which he likens the poems to follow to
+an Italian dish made of ortolans on toast with a bitter sage leaf,
+symbolizing sense, sight, and song from Sa'di's preface to the "Rose
+Garden," wherein he says, "Yet will men of light and learning, from whom
+the true countenance of a discourse is not concealed, be well aware that
+herein the pearls of good counsel which heal are threaded on strings of
+right sense; that the bitter physic of admonition is constantly mingled
+with the honey of good humor, so that the spirits of listeners grow not
+sad, and that they remain not exempt from blessings of acceptance."
+
+A further interest attaches to these lyrics because they form a series of
+emotional phases in the soul-life of two lovers whom we are probably
+justified in regarding as Mr. and Mrs. Browning. One naturally thinks of
+them as companion pictures to Mrs. Browning's "Sonnets from the
+Portuguese." In these the sunrise of a great love is portrayed with
+intense and exalted passion, while the lyrics in "Ferishtah's Fancies"
+reflect the subsequent development of such a love, through the awakening
+of whole new realms of feeling, wherein love for humanity is enlarged
+criticism from the one beloved welcome; all the little trials of life
+dissolved in the new light; and divine love realized with a force never
+before possible.
+
+Do we not see a living portrait of the two poets in the lyric "So the head
+aches and the limbs are faint?" Many a hint may be found in the Browning
+letters to prove that Mrs. Browning with just such a frail body possessed
+a fire of spirit that carried her constantly toward attainment, while he,
+with all the vigor of splendid health, could with truth have frequently
+said, "In the soul of me sits sluggishness." These exquisite lyrics,
+which, whether they conform to Elizabethan models or not, are as fine as
+anything ever done in this form, are crowned by the epilogue in which we
+hear the stricken husband crying out to her whom twenty years earlier he
+had called his "lyric love," in a voice doubting, yet triumphing in the
+thought that his lifelong optimism is the light radiating from the halo
+which her human love had irised round his head.
+
+No more emphatic way than the interspersion of these emotional lyrics
+could have been chosen to bring home the poet's conviction of the value of
+emotion in finding a positive basis for religious belief.
+
+In the "Parleyings" the discussions turn principally upon artistic
+problems and their relation to modern thought. Four out of the seven were
+inspired by artist, poet or musician. The forgotten worthies whom Browning
+rescued from oblivion make their appeal to him upon various grounds that
+connect them with the present.
+
+Bernard de Mandeville evidently caught Browning's fancy, because in his
+satirical poem, "The Grumbling Hive," he forestalled, by a defence of the
+Duke of Marlborough's war policy, the doctrine of the relativity of good
+and evil. This subject, though so fully treated in the "Fancies," still
+continued to fascinate Browning, who seemed to feel the need of thinking
+his way through all its implications. Fresh interest is added in this
+case because the objector in the argument was the poet's contemporary
+Carlyle, whose well-known pessimism in regard to the existence of evil is
+graphically presented.
+
+Browning clenches his side of the argument with an original and daring
+variation upon the Prometheus myth led up to by one of the most
+magnificent passages in the whole range of his poetry, and probably the
+finest example anywhere in literature of a description of nature as
+interpreted by the laws of cosmic evolution. A comparison of this passage
+with the one in "Paracelsus" brings out very clearly the exact measure of
+the advance in the poet's thought during the fifty years between which
+they were written--1835 and 1887. While in the "Paracelsus" passage it is
+the thought of the joy in the creator's soul for his creations, and the
+participation of mankind in this joy of progression while pleasure climbs
+its heights forever and forever, which occupies the poet's mind, in the
+later passage, there is no attempt at a definite conception of the divine
+nature. Force represented in the sunlight is described as developing life
+upon the earth. The thrill of this life-giving power is felt by all
+things, and is unquestioningly accepted and delighted in.
+
+                                          "Everywhere
+  Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime
+  Thrilling her to the heart of things: since there
+  No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew,
+  No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew
+  Glad through the inrush--glad nor more nor less
+  Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness,
+  Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread,
+  The universal world of creatures bred
+  By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise."
+
+Man alone questions. His mind reaches out for knowledge of the cause; he
+would know its nature. Man's mind will not give any definite answer to
+this question. But Prometheus offered an artifice whereby man's mind is
+satisfied. He drew sun's rays into a focus plain and true. The very sun in
+little: made fire burn and henceforth do man service. Denuded of its
+scientific and mystical symbolism, Browning thus makes the Prometheus myth
+teach his favorite doctrine, namely, that the image of love formed in the
+human heart by means of the burning glass supplied by sense and feeling is
+a symbol of infinite love.
+
+Daniel Bartoli, a Jesuit of the seventeenth century who is dyed and doubly
+dyed in superstition, is set up by Browning in the next poem simply to be
+knocked down again upon the ground that all the legendary saints he
+worshipped could not compare with a real woman the poet knows. The
+romantic story of the lady is told in Browning's most fascinating
+narrative style, so rapid and direct that it has all the force of a
+dramatic sketch. The heroine's claim upon the poet's admiration consists
+in her recognition of the sacredness of love, which she will not dishonor
+for worldly considerations, and finding her betrothed incapable of
+attaining her height of nobleness, she leaves him free.
+
+This story bears upon the poet's philosophy as it reflects his attitude
+toward human love, which he considers so clearly a revelation that any
+treatment of it not absolutely noble and true to the highest ideals is a
+sin against heaven itself.
+
+George Bubb Dodington is the black sheep of these later poems. He gives
+the poet an opportunity to let loose all his subtlety and sarcasm, while
+the reader may exercise his wits in discovering that the poet _assumes_ to
+agree with Dodington in his doubtful doctrine of serving the state with an
+eye always upon his own private welfare, and pretends to criticise him
+only for his method of attaining his ends. His method is to disclaim that
+he works for any other good than that of the State--a proposition so
+preposterous in his case that nobody would believe it. The poet then
+presents what purports to be the correct method of successful
+statesmanship--namely, to pose as a superior being endowed with the divine
+right to rule, treating everybody as his puppet, and entirely scornful of
+any criticisms against himself. If he will adopt this attitude he may
+change his tactics every year and the people, instead of suspecting his
+sincerity, will think that he has wise reasons beyond their insight for
+his changes. The poem is a powerful, intensely cynical argument against
+the imperialistic temper and in favor of liberal government. This means
+for the individual not only the right but the power to judge for himself,
+instead of being obliged to depend, because of his own inefficiency, upon
+the leadership of the over-man, whose intentions are unfortunately too
+seldom to be trusted.
+
+The poet called from the shades by Browning, Christopher Smart, is
+celebrated in the world of criticism for having only once in his life
+written a great poem. The eulogies upon the beauties of "The Song of
+David" might not be echoed by all lay readers of poetry; nor is it of any
+moment whether Browning actually agreed with the conclusions of the
+critics, since the episode is used merely as a text for discussing the
+problem of beauty versus truth in art. Should the poet's province be
+simply to record his vision of the beauty and the strength of nature and
+the universe--visions which come to him in moments of inspiration such as
+that which came once to Christopher Smart? Browning answers the question
+characteristically with his feet upon the earth. The visions of poets
+should not be considered as ends in themselves, but as material to be used
+for greater ends.
+
+The poet should find his inspiration in the human heart, and climb to
+heaven by its means, not investigate the heavens first. Diligently must he
+study mankind, and teach as man may through his knowledge.
+
+In "Francis Furini" the subject is the nude in art. The keynote is struck
+by the poet's declaring he will never believe the tale told by Baldinicci
+that Furini ordered all his pictures in which there were nude figures
+burned. He expresses his indignation at the tale vigorously at some
+length, showing plainly his own sympathies.
+
+The passage in the poem bearing more especially upon the present
+discussion is the lecture by Furini imagined by the poet to have been
+delivered before a London audience. It is a long and recondite speech in
+which the scientific and the intuitional methods of arriving at truth
+are compared. While the scientific method is acknowledged to be of value,
+the intuitional method is claimed as by far the more important.
+
+A philippic against Greek art and its imitation is delivered by the poet
+in the "Parleying with Gerard de Lairesse," whom he makes the scapegoat of
+his strictures, on the score of a book Lairesse wrote in which was
+described a walk through a Dutch landscape when every feature was
+transmogrified by classic imaginings.
+
+To this good soul, an old sepulcher struck by lightning became the tomb of
+Phaeton, and an old cartwheel half buried in the sand near by, the Chariot
+of the Sun.
+
+In a spirit of bravado Browning proceeds to show what he himself could
+make of a walk provided he condescended to illuminate it by classic
+metaphor and symbol, and a remarkable passage is the result. It occupies
+from the eighth to the twelfth stanza. It is meant to be in derision of a
+grandiloquent, classically embroidered style but so splendid is the
+language, so haunting the pictures, the symbolism so profound that it is
+as if a God were showing some poor weakling mortal how not to do it--and
+through his omniscience must perforce create something wondrously
+beautiful. The double feeling produced in reading this passage only adds
+to its interest. After thus classicizing in a manner that might make
+Euripides, himself, turn green with envy, he nonchalantly remarks:
+
+"Enough, stop further fooling," and to show how a modern poet greets a
+landscape he flings in the perfectly simple and irresistible little lyric:
+
+  "Dance, yellows, and whites and reds."
+
+The poet's strictures upon classicism are entirely consonant with his
+philosophy, placing as he does the paramount importance on living
+realities, "Do and nowise dream," he exclaims:
+
+  "Earth's young significance is all to learn;
+  The dead Greek love lies buried in its urn
+  Where who seeks fire finds ashes."
+
+The "Parleying" with Charles Avison is more a poem of moods than any of
+the others. The poet's profound appreciation of music is reflected in his
+claiming it as the highest artistic expression possible to man. Sadness
+comes to him, however, at the thought of the ephemeralness of its forms, a
+fact that is borne in on him because of the inadequateness of Avison's
+old march styled "grand." He finally emerges triumphantly from this mood
+of sadness through the realization that music is the most perfect symbol
+of the evolution of spirit, of which the central truth--
+
+  "The inmost care where truth abides in fulness"--
+
+as Paracelsus expresses it, remains always permanent, while the form is
+ever changing, but though ever changing it is of absolute value to the
+time when the spirit found expression in it. Furthermore, in any form once
+possessing beauty, by throwing one's self into its historical atmosphere
+the beauty may be regained.
+
+The poem has, of course, a still larger significance in relation to all
+forms of truth and beauty of which every age has had its living, immortal
+examples, the "broken arcs" which finally will make the perfect round,
+each arc perfect in itself, and thus the poet's final pæan is joyous,
+"Never dream that what once lived shall ever die."
+
+The prologue of this series of poems prefigures the thought in a striking
+dialogue between Apollo and the Fates wherein the Fates symbolize the
+natural forces of life, behind which is Zeus or divine power; Apollo's
+light symbolizes the glamour which hope and aspiration throw over the
+events of human existence, without actually giving any assurance of its
+worth, and the wine of Bacchus symbolizes feeling, by means of which a
+perception of the absolute is gained. Man's reason, guided by the divine,
+accepts this revelation through feeling not as actual knowledge of the
+absolute which transcends all intellectual attempts to grasp it, but as a
+promise sufficiently assuring to take him through the ills and
+uncertainties of life with faith in the ultimate triumph of beauty and
+good.
+
+The epilogue, a dialogue between John Fust and his friends, brings home
+the thought once more in another form, emphasizing the fact that there can
+be no new realm of actual, palpable knowledge opened up to man beyond that
+which his intellect is able to perceive. Once having gained this knowledge
+of the failure of intellectual knowledge to solve what Whitman calls the
+"strangling problems" of life, man's part is to follow onward through
+ignorance.
+
+                                "Dare and deserve!
+  As still to its asymptote speedeth the curve,
+  So approximates Man--Thee, who reachable not,
+    Hast formed him to yearningly
+                              Follow thy whole
+  Sole and single omniscience!"
+
+It will be seen from this review of the salient points enlarged upon by
+Browning in these last groups of poems that he has deliberately set
+himself to harmonize the intellectual and the intuitional aspects of human
+consciousness. He has sought to join the hands of mind and spirit. The
+artistic exuberance of Paracelsus is supplemented by spiritual fervor. To
+the young Browning, the beauty of immortal, joyous life pursuing its
+heights forever was as a radiant vision, to the Browning who had grappled
+with the strangling problems of the century this beauty was not so
+distinctly seen, but its reality was felt with all the depth of an
+intensely spiritual nature--a nature moreover so absolutely fearless, that
+it could unflinchingly confront every giant of doubt, or of
+disillusionment which science in its pristine egotism had conjured up,
+saying "Keep to thine own province, where thou art indeed powerful; to the
+threshold of the eternal we may come through thy ministrations, but the
+consciousness of divine things cometh through the still small voice of the
+heart."
+
+Thus, while he accepted every law relating to phenomena which science has
+been able to formulate, he realized the futility of resting in a primal,
+wholly dehumanized energy, that is, something not greater but less than
+its own outcome, humanity. He was incapable of any such absurdity as
+Clifford's dictum that "Reason, intelligence and volition are properties
+of a complex which is made up of elements, themselves not rational, not
+intelligent, not conscious." Since Clifford's time, the marked differences
+between the processes of a psychic being like man, and the processes of
+nature have been so fully recognized and so carefully defined by
+psychologists that Browning's insistence upon making man the center whence
+truth radiates has had full confirmation.
+
+Theodore Merz has summed up these psychological conclusions in regard to
+the characteristics peculiar to man as distinguished from all the rest of
+the universe in the following words:
+
+    "There are two properties with which we are familiar through common
+    sense and ordinary reflection as belonging especially to the phenomena
+    of our inner self-conscious life, and these properties seem to lie
+    quite beyond the sphere and the possibilities of the ordinary methods
+    of exact research.
+
+    "As we ascend in the scale of human beings we become aware that they
+    exhibit a special kind of unity which cannot be defined, a unity
+    which, even when apparently lost in periods of unconsciousness, is
+    able to reestablish itself by the wonderful and indefinable property
+    called 'memory'--a center which can only be very imperfectly
+    localized--a together which is more than a mechanical sum; in fact
+    we rise to the conception of individuality, that which cannot be
+    divided and put together again out of its parts.
+
+    "The second property is still more remarkable. The world of the inner
+    processes which accompany the higher forms of nervous development in
+    human beings is capable of unlimited growth and it is capable of this
+    by a process of becoming external: it becomes external, and, as it
+    were, perpetuates itself in language, literature, science and art,
+    legislation, society, and the like. We have no analogue of this in
+    physical nature, where matter and energy are constant quantities and
+    where the growth and multiplication of living matter is merely a
+    conversion of existing matter and energy into special altered forms
+    without increase or decrease in quantity. But the quantity of the
+    inner thing is continually on the increase; in fact, this increase is
+    the only thing of interest in the whole world."
+
+Thus the modern psychologist and the poet who in the early days of the
+century said the soul was the only thing worth study join hands.
+
+The passage already referred to in "Francis Furini" presents most
+explicitly the objective or intellectual method and the subjective or
+intuitional method of the search for truth.
+
+Furini is made to question--
+
+                                          "Evolutionists!
+  At truth I glimpse from depths, you glance from heights,
+  Our stations for discovery opposites,
+  How should ensue agreement! I explain."
+
+He describes, then, how the search of the evolutionist for the absolute is
+outside of man. "'Tis the tip-top of things to which you strain." Arriving
+at the spasm which sets things going, they are stopped, and since having
+arrived at unconscious energy, they can go no further, they now drop down
+to a point where atoms somehow begin to think, feel, and know themselves
+to be, and the world's begun such as we recognize it. This is a true
+presentation of the attitude of physicists and chemists to-day, the latter
+especially holding that experiment proves that in the atoms themselves is
+an embryonic form of consciousness and will. From these is finally evolved
+at last self-conscious man. But after all this investigating on the part
+of the evolutionist what has been gained? Of power--that is, power to
+create nature or life, or even to understand it--man possesses no
+particle, and of knowledge, only just so much as to show that it ends in
+ignorance on every side. This is the result of the objective search for
+truth. But begin with man himself, and there is a fact upon which he can
+take a sure stand, his self-consciousness--a "togetherness," as Merz says,
+which cannot be explained mathematically by the adding up of atoms; and
+furthermore an inborn certainty that whatever is felt to be within had
+its rise or cause without: "thus blend the conscious I, and all things
+perceived in one Effect." Through this subjective perception of an
+all-powerful cause a reflex light is thrown back upon all that the
+investigations of the intellect have accomplished. The cause is no longer
+simply blind energy, but must itself be possessed of gifts as great and
+still greater than those with which the soul of man is endowed. The forces
+at work in nature thus become instinct with wonder and beauty, the good
+and evil of life reveal themselves as a means used by absolute Power and
+Love for the perfecting of the soul which made to know on and ever must
+know
+
+  "All to be known at any halting stage
+  Of [the] soul's progress, such as earth, where wage
+  War, just for soul's instruction, pain with joy,
+  Folly with wisdom, all that works annoy
+  With all that quiets and contents."
+
+To sum up--our investigations into Browning's thought show him to be a
+type primarily of the mystic. Mysticism in its most pronounced forms
+regards the emotions of the human mind as supreme. The mystic, instead of
+allowing the intellectual faculty to lead the way, degrades it to an
+inferior position and makes it entirely subservient to the feelings. In
+some moods Browning seems almost to belong to this pronounced type; for
+example, when he says in "A Pillar at Sebzevar," "Say not that we know,
+rather that we love, therefore we know enough."
+
+[Illustration: DAVID STRAUSS]
+
+It must be remembered, however, that he is not in either class of the
+supernatural mystic, one of which supposes truth to be gained by a fixed
+supernatural channel, the other that it is gained by extraordinary
+supernatural means. On the contrary, truth comes to Browning in pursuance
+of a regular law or fact of the inward sensibility, which may be defined
+in his case as a mode of intuition. His intuition of God, as we have seen,
+is based upon the feeling of love both in its human and its abstract
+aspects.
+
+But this is not all. Upon the intellectual side Browning accepted the
+conclusions of scientific investigation as far as phenomena were
+concerned, and while he denied its worth in giving direct knowledge of the
+Absolute, he recognized it as useful because of its very failure in
+strengthening the sense of the existence of a power transcending human
+conception. "What is our failure here but a triumph's evidence of the
+fulness of the days?" And, furthermore, with mystic love already in our
+hearts, all knowledge that the scientist may bring us of the phenomena of
+nature and life only adds immeasurably to our wonder and awe of the power
+which has brought these things to pass, thus "with much more knowledge"
+comes "always much more love."
+
+Once more, the poet's mysticism is tempered by a tinge of idealism. There
+are several passages in his poems, notably one already quoted from Furini,
+which show him to have had a perception of God directly through his own
+consciousness by means of what the idealist calls the higher reason. His
+perception, for instance, that whatever takes place within the
+consciousness had its rise without and that this external origin emanates
+from God is the idealist's way of arriving at the absolute.
+
+Thus we see that into Browning's religious conceptions enter the
+intuitions of the artistic consciousness as illustrated in Paracelsus
+where God is the divine artist joying in his creations, the intuitions of
+the intellect which finds in the failure of knowledge to probe the secrets
+of the universe the assurance of a transcendent power beyond human ken,
+the intuition of the higher reason which affirms God is, and the
+intuitions of the heart which promise that God is love, through whom is
+to come fulfilment of all human aspirations toward Beauty, Truth, and Love
+in immortality.
+
+If these are all points which have been emphasized, now by one, now by
+another, of the vast array of thinkers who have crowded the past century,
+there is no one who to my knowledge has so completely harmonized the
+various thought tendencies of the age, and certainly none who has clothed
+them in such a wealth of imaginative and emotional illustration.
+
+In these last poems Browning appears to borrow an apt term from Whitman,
+as the "Answerer" of his age. In them he has unquestioningly accepted the
+knowledge which science has brought, and, recognizing its relative
+character, has yet interpreted it in such a way as to make it subserve the
+highest ideals in ethics, religion, and art. Far from reflecting any
+degeneration in Browning's philosophy of life, these poems place on a
+firmer basis than ever thoughts prominent in his poetry from the first,
+while adding to these the profounder insight into life which life's
+experiences had brought him.
+
+The subject matter and form are no less remarkable than their thought. The
+variety in both is almost bewildering. Religion and fable, romance and
+philosophy, art and science all commingled in rich profusion; everything
+in language--talk almost colloquial, dainty lyrics full of exquisite
+emotion, and grand passages which present in sweeping images now the
+processes of cosmic evolution, now those of spiritual evolution, until it
+seems as if we had indeed been conducted to some vast mountain height,
+whence we can look forth upon the century's turbulent seas of thought,
+into which flows many a current from the past, while suspended above
+between the sea and sky, like the crucifix in Simons's wonderful symbolic
+picture of the Middle Ages, is the mystical form of divine love and joy
+which Browning has made symbolic of the nineteenth century.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+POLITICAL TENDENCIES
+
+
+In the political affairs of his own age and country Browning as a poet
+shows little interest. This may at first seem strange, for that he was
+deeply sympathetic with past historical movements indicating a growth
+toward democratic ideals in government is abundantly proved by his choice
+and treatment of historical epochs in which the democratic tendencies were
+peculiarly evident. Why then did he not give us dramatic pictures of the
+Victorian era, in which as perhaps in no other era of English history the
+yeast of political freedom has been steadily and quietly working?
+
+There were probably several reasons for his failure to make himself felt
+as an influence in the political world of his time. In the first place, he
+was preëminently a dramatic poet, and as such his interest was in the
+presentation and analysis of individual character as it might work itself
+out in a given historical environment. To deal with contemporaries in
+this analytic manner would be a difficult and delicate matter, and, as we
+see, in those instances where he did venture upon an analysis of English
+contemporaries, as in the case of Wiseman (Bishop Blougram), Carlyle in
+Bernard de Mandeville and in "George Bubb Dodington," the sketch of Lord
+Beaconsfield, he takes care to suppress every external circumstance which
+would lead to their identification, and to dwell only upon their
+intellectual or psychic aspects.
+
+A second reason is that the present is usually too near at hand to be used
+altogether effectively as dramatic material. Contemporary conditions of
+history seem to have an air of stateliness owing to the fact that every
+one is familiar with them, not only through talk and experience but
+through newspapers and magazines, while their larger, universal meanings
+cannot be seen at too close a range. If, however, past historical episodes
+and their tendencies can be so presented as to illustrate the tendencies
+of the present, then the needful artistic perspective is gained. In this
+manner, with a few minor exceptions, Browning has revealed the direction
+in which his political sympathies lay.
+
+When Browning was born, the first Napoleonic episode was nearing its
+close. Absolutism and militarism had in its lust for power and bloodshed
+slaughtered itself for the time being, and once more there was opportunity
+for the people of England to strive for their own enfranchisement.
+
+As a progressive ministry in England did not come into power until 1830,
+the struggles of the people were rewarded with little success during many
+years after the Battle of Waterloo. During the childhood and boyhood of
+Browning the events which from time to time marked the determination of
+the downtrodden Englishman to secure a larger measure of justice for
+himself were exciting enough to have made a strong impression upon the
+precocious mind of the incipient poet even in the seclusion of his
+father's library at Camberwell.
+
+The artificial prosperity which had buoyed up the workman during the war
+with France suddenly collapsed with the advent of peace after the Battle
+of Waterloo. Everything seemed to combine to make the affairs of the
+workingman desperate. Public business had been blunderingly administered,
+and while a fatuous Cabinet was congratulating the nation upon the
+flourishing state of the country, trade was actually almost at a
+standstill, and failures in business were the order of the day. To make
+matters worse, a wet summer and early frosts interfered with farming, and
+the result was that laborers and workmen could not find employment. A not
+unusual percentage of paupers in any given district was four fifths of the
+whole population. Thinking the farmers were to blame for the high price of
+bread, these starving people wreaked their vengeance on them by burning
+farm buildings, and machinery, and even stacks of corn and hay.
+
+[Illustration: CARDINAL WISEMAN]
+
+Instead of giving sympathy to these men in their desperate condition, a
+conservative government saw in them only rioters, and took the most
+stringent measures against them. They were tried by a special commission,
+and thirty-four of them were condemned to death, though it is recorded
+that only five of them were executed. The miners of Cornwall and Wales,
+the lace makers of Nottingham, and the iron workers of the Black Country,
+next broke out and the smashing of machinery continued. Finally there was
+a meeting of the artisans of London, Westminster, and Southwick in Spa
+Fields, Clerkenwall, which had been called by Harry Hunt, a man of
+property and education, who was known as a supporter of extreme measures,
+and the leader of the Radicals of that day. They met for the legitimate
+purpose, one would think, of considering the propriety of petitioning the
+Prince Regent and Parliament to adopt means of relieving the existing
+distress. One of the speakers, however, a poor doctor by the name of
+Watson, was of a more belligerent disposition. He made an inflammatory
+speech which ended by his seizing a tri-colored flag and marching toward
+the city followed by the turbulent rabble. On their way they seized the
+contents of a gunsmith's shop on Snow Hill, murdered a man, and finally
+were met opposite the Mansion House by the Lord Mayor, who, assisted by a
+strong body of police, arrested some of the leaders and dispersed the
+rest. The arrested persons were brought to trial and indicted for high
+treason by the Attorney General, but the jury, evidently thinking the
+indictment had taken too exaggerated a form, acquitted Watson, and the
+others were dismissed.
+
+The conservative Parliament was, however, so alarmed by these proceedings
+that, instead of seeking some way of removing the cause of the
+difficulties, it thought only of making restrictions for the protection of
+the person of the Regent, of the more effective prevention of seditious
+meetings and of surer punishment. And what were some of these measures?
+Debating societies, lecture halls and reading rooms were shut up. Even
+lectures on medicine, surgery and chemistry were prohibited. Though there
+was a possibility of getting a license to lecture from the magistrate, the
+law was interpreted in the narrowest spirit.
+
+Parliamentary reform began to be spoken of in 1819, when a resolution
+pledging the House of Commons to the consideration of the state of
+representation was rejected by a vote of one hundred and fifty-three to
+fifty-eight. This decision stirred up the reform spirit, and large
+meetings in favor of it were held. The people attending these meetings
+received military drilling and marched to their meetings in orderly
+processions, a fact naturally very disturbing to the government. When a
+great meeting was arranged at Manchester on the 16th of August, troops
+were accordingly sent to Manchester. The cavalry was ordered to charge the
+crowd, and although they used the flat side of their swords, the charge
+resulted in the killing of six persons and the wounding of some hundreds.
+The clash did not end here, for to offset the ministerial approval of the
+action of the magistrates and their decision that the meeting was illegal,
+the Common Council of London passed a resolution by a large majority
+declaring that the meeting was legal. A number of Whig noblemen also were
+on the side of the London Council and made similar motions. But the
+ministers, unmoved by these signs of the times, introduced bills in
+Parliament for the repression of disorder and the further restraining of
+public liberty. The bills, it is true, were strenuously opposed in both
+houses, but the eloquence expended against them was all to no purpose, the
+bills were passed, and reform for the time being was nipped in the bud.
+
+Although after this laws were gradually introduced by the ministers which
+tended very much to the betterment of conditions, the fire of reform did
+not burst out again with full fury until the time of the Revolution of
+July, in France, which it will be remembered was directed against the
+despotic King Charles X, and ended in his being deposed, when his crown
+was given to his distant cousin Louis Philippe. The success of the French
+in their stand against despotism caused a general revolutionary stir in
+several European countries, while in England the spirit of revolution
+showed itself in incendiary fires from one end of the country to the
+other.
+
+With Parliament itself full of believers in reform, the chief of the
+Cabinet, the Duke of Wellington, announced that the House of Commons did
+not need reform and that he would resist all proposals for a change. So
+great was the popular excitement at this announcement that the Duke could
+not venture to go forth to dine at the Guildhall for fear that he might be
+attacked.
+
+Such were the chief episodes in the forward advance of the people up to
+the time of the presentation of the Reform Bill in Parliament. This
+important measure has been described as the greatest organic change in the
+British Constitution that had taken place since the revolution of 1688.
+When this bill was finally passed it meant a transference of governmental
+control from the upper classes to the middle classes, and was the
+inauguration of a policy which has constantly added to the prosperity and
+well-being of the English people. The agitation upon this bill, introduced
+in the House by Lord John Russell, under the Premiership of Earl Grey, and
+a ministry favorable to reform, was filling the attention of all
+Englishmen to the exclusion of every other subject just at the time when
+Browning was emerging into manhood, 1831 and 1832, and though he has not
+commemorated in his poetry this great step in the political progress of
+his own century, his first play, written in 1837, takes up a period of
+English history in which a momentous struggle for liberty on the part of
+the people was in progress.
+
+Important as the Reform Bill was, it furnished no such picturesque
+episodes for a dramatist as did the struggle of Pym and Strafford under
+the despotic rule of King Charles I.
+
+In choosing this period for his play the poet found not only material
+which furnished to his hand a series of wonderfully dramatic situations,
+but in the three men about whom the action moves is presented an
+individuality and a contrast in character full of those possibilities for
+analysis so attractive to Browning's mind.
+
+Another point to be gained by taking this remote period of history was
+that his attitude could be supremely that of the philosopher of history.
+He could portray with fairness whatever worth of character he found to
+admire in the leaders upon either side, at the same time that he could
+show which possessed the winning principle--the principle of progress. In
+dealing with contemporary events a strong personal feeling is sure to gain
+the upper hand, and to be non-partisan and therefore truly dramatic is a
+difficult, if not an impossible, task. When we come to examine this play,
+we find that the character which unquestionably interested the poet most
+was Strafford's; not because of his political principles but because of
+his devotion to his King. Human love and loyalty in whomever manifested
+was always of the supremest interest to Browning, and, working upon any
+hints furnished by history, the poet has developed the character of
+Strafford in the light of his personal friendship for the King--a feeling
+so powerful that no fickle change of mood on the part of the King could
+alter it. Upon this fact of his personal relations to the King Strafford's
+actions in this great crisis have been interpreted and explained, though
+not defended, from the political point of view.
+
+Some wavering on the part of Pym is also explained upon the ground of his
+friendship for and his belief in Strafford, but mark the difference
+between the two men. Pym, once sure that Strafford is not on the side of
+progress, crushes out all personal feeling. He allows nothing to stand in
+the way of his political policy. With unflinching purpose he proceeds
+against his former friend, straight on to the impeachment for treason,
+straight on, like an inexorable fate, to the prevention of his rescue from
+execution. Browning's dramatic imagination is responsible for this last
+climax in which he brings the two men face to face. Here, in Pym's
+strength of will to serve England at any cost, mingled with the hope of
+meeting Strafford purged of all his errors in a future life, and in
+Strafford's response, "When we meet, Pym, I'd be set right--not now! Best
+die," is foreshadowed the ultimate triumph of the parliamentary over the
+monarchical principles of government, and the poet's own sympathy with the
+party of progress is made plain.
+
+It is interesting in the present connection to inquire whether there are
+any parallels between the agitation connected with the reform legislation
+of 1832 and the revolution at the time of Charles I which might send
+Browning's mind back to that period. The special point about which the
+battle raged in 1832 was the representation in Parliament. This was so
+irregular that it was absolutely unfair. In many instances large districts
+or towns would have fewer representatives than smaller ones, or perhaps
+none at all. Representation was more a matter of favoritism than of
+justice. The votes in Parliament were, therefore, not at all a true
+measure of the attitude of the country. It seems strange that so eminently
+sensible a reform should meet with such determined opposition. As usual,
+those in power feared loss of privilege. The House of Lords was the
+obstruction. The bill was in fact a step logically following upon the
+determination of the people of the time of Charles I that they would not
+submit to be levied upon for ship-money upon the sole authority of the
+King. They demanded that Parliament, which had not been assembled for ten
+years, should meet and decide the question. This question was not merely
+one of the war-tax or ship-money, but of whether the King should have the
+power to levy taxes upon the people without consent of Parliament.
+
+As every one knows, when the King finally consented to the assembling of
+Parliament, in April, 1840, he informed it that there would be no
+discussion of its demands until it had granted the war subsidies for which
+it had been asked. The older Vane added to the consternation of the
+assembly by announcing that the King would accept nothing less than the
+twelve subsidies which he had demanded in his message. In the face of this
+ultimatum the committee broke up without coming to a conclusion,
+postponing further consideration until the next day, but before they had
+had time to consider the matter the next day the King had decided to
+dissolve the Parliament.
+
+The King was forced, however, to reassemble Parliament again in the
+autumn. In this Parliament the people's party gained control, and many
+reforms were instituted. Led by such daring men as Pym, Hampden, Cromwell,
+and the younger Vane, resolutions were passed censuring the levying of
+ship-money, tonnage and poundage, monopolies, innovations in religion--in
+fact, all the grievances of the oppressed which had been ignored for a
+decade were brought to light and redressed by the House, quite regardless
+of the King's attitude.
+
+The chief of the abuses which it was bent upon remedying was the imposing
+of taxes upon the authority of the King and the persecution of the
+Puritans. But there was another grievance which received the attention of
+the Long Parliament, and which forms a close link with the reforms of
+1832--namely, the attempt to improve the system of representation in
+Parliament, an attempt which was partially carried into effect by Cromwell
+later. Under Charles II, however, things fell back into their old way and
+gradually went on from bad to worse until the tide changed, and the people
+became finally aroused after two hundred years to the need of a radical
+change. The blindness of the Duke of Wellington, declaring no reform was
+needed, is hardly less to be marveled at than that of King Charles
+declaring he would rule without Parliament. The King took the ground that
+the people had no right to representation in the government; the Minister,
+that only some of the people had a right.
+
+The horrors of revolution followed upon the blindness of the one, with its
+reactionary aftermath, while upon the other there was violence, it is
+true, and a revolution was feared, but through the wise measures of the
+liberal ministers no subversion of the government occurred. Violence
+reached such a pitch, however, that the castle of Nottingham in Derby was
+burned, the King's brother was dragged from his horse, and Lord
+Londonderry roughly treated. The mob at Bristol was so infuriated that Sir
+C. Wetherell, the Recorder of the city, who had voted against the bill,
+had to be escorted to the Guildhall by a hundred mounted gentlemen. Two
+men having been arrested, the mob attacked and destroyed the interior of
+the Mansion House, set fire to the Bishop's palace and to many other
+buildings. There was not only an enormous loss of property, but loss of
+life.
+
+A quieter demonstration at Birmingham carries us back, as it might have
+carried Browning, to the "great-hearted men" of the Long Parliament. A
+meeting was called which was attended by one hundred and fifty thousand
+persons, and resolutions were passed to the effect that if the Reform Bill
+were not passed they would refuse to pay taxes, as Hampden had refused to
+pay ship-money.
+
+The final act in this momentous drama was initiated with the introduction
+by Lord John Russell of the third Reform Bill in December, 1831. Again it
+was defeated in the House of Lords, whereupon some of the Cabinet wished
+to ask the King to create a sufficient number of new peers to force the
+bill through the House. Earl Grey was not at all in favor of this, but at
+last consented. This course was not welcome to the House of Lords, and the
+doubtful members in the House promised that if this suggestion were not
+carried into effect they would insure a sufficient majority in the House
+of Lords to carry the bill. This was done, but before the Lords went into
+committee a hostile motion postponing the disfranchisement clauses was
+carried. Then Earl Grey asked for the creation of new peers. As it would
+require the creating of about fifty new peers, the King refused, the
+ministry resigned and the Duke of Wellington came into power again. But
+his power, like that of Strafford, was broken. He had reached the point of
+recognizing that some reform was needed, but he could not persuade his
+colleagues of this. In the meantime the House of Commons passed a
+resolution of confidence in the Grey administration. Such determined
+opposition being shown not only in Parliament but by the people in various
+ways, Wellington felt his only course was resignation. William IV had,
+much to his chagrin, to recall Grey, but he escaped the necessity of
+creating a large number of peers, by asking the opposition in the House of
+Lords to withdraw their resistance to the bill. The Duke of Wellington and
+others thereupon absented themselves, and finding further obstruction was
+useless, the Lords at last passed the bill and it became law in June,
+1832.
+
+This national crisis through which Browning had lived could not fail to
+have made its impression on him. It is certainly an indication of the
+depth of his interest in the growth of liberalism that his first English
+subject, written only a few years subsequent to this momentous change in
+governmental methods, should have dealt with a period whose analysis and
+interpretation in dramatic form gave him every opportunity for the
+expression of his sympathy with liberal ideals. Broad-minded in his
+interpretation of Strafford's career, in love with his qualities of
+loyalty, and his capabilities of genuine affection for the vacillating
+Charles, he made Strafford the hero of his play, but it is Pym whom, in
+his play, he has exalted as the nation's hero, and into whose mouth he has
+put one of the greatest and most intensely pathetic speeches ever uttered
+by an Englishman. It is when he confronts Strafford at the last:
+
+  "Have I done well? Speak, England! Whose sole sake
+  I still have labored for, with disregard
+  To my own heart,--for whom my youth was made
+  Barren, my manhood waste, to offer up
+  Her sacrifice--this friend--this Wentworth here--
+  Who walked in youth with me, loved me, it may be,
+  And whom, for his forsaking England's cause,
+  I hunted by all means (trusting that she
+  Would sanctify all means) even to the block
+  Which waits for him. And saying this, I feel
+  No bitterer pang than first I felt, the hour
+  I swore that Wentworth might leave us, but I
+  Would never leave him: I do leave him now.
+  I render up my charge (be witness, God!)
+  To England who imposed it. I have done
+  Her bidding--poorly, wrongly,--it may be,
+  With ill effects--for I am weak, a man:
+  Still, I have done my best, my human best,
+  Not faltering for a moment. It is done.
+  And this said, if I say ... yes, I will say
+  I never loved but one man--David not
+  More Jonathan! Even thus I love him now:
+  And look for that chief portion in that world
+  Where great hearts led astray are turned again,
+  (Soon it may be, and, certes, will be soon:
+  My mission over, I shall not live long)--
+  Ay, here I know and talk--I dare and must,
+  Of England, and her great reward, as all
+  I look for there; but in my inmost heart,
+  Believe, I think of stealing quite away
+  To walk once more with Wentworth--my youth's friend
+  Purged from all error, gloriously renewed,
+  And Eliot shall not blame us. Then indeed ...
+  This is no meeting, Wentworth! Tears increase
+  Too hot. A thin mist--is it blood?--enwraps
+  The face I loved once. Then, the meeting be."
+
+At the same time that Browning was writing "Strafford," he was also
+engaged upon "Sordello." In that he has given expression to his democratic
+philosophy through his construction and interpretation of Sordello's
+character as a champion of the people as well as a poet who ushered in the
+dawn of the Italian literary Renaissance. As he made Paracelsus develop
+from a dependence upon knowledge as his sole guide in his philosophy of
+life into a perception of the place emotion must hold in any satisfactory
+theory of life, and put into his mouth a modern conception of evolution
+illuminated by his own artistic emotion, so he makes Sordello develop from
+the individualistic type to the socialist type of man, who is bent upon
+raising the masses of the people to higher conditions. The ideal of
+liberal forms of government was even in Sordello's time a growing one,
+sifting into Italy from Greek precedents, but Browning's Sordello sees
+something beyond either political or ecclesiastical espousal of the
+people's cause--namely, the espousal of the people's cause by the people
+themselves, the arrival of the self-governing democracy, an ideal much
+nearer attainment now than when Browning was writing:
+
+  "Two parties take the world up, and allow
+  No third, yet have one principle, subsist
+  By the same injustice; whoso shall enlist
+  With either, ranks with man's inveterate foes.
+  So there is one less quarrel to compose
+  The Guelf, the Ghibelline may be to curse--
+  I have done nothing, but both sides do worse
+  Than nothing. Nay, to me, forgotten, reft
+  Of insight, lapped by trees and flowers, was left
+  The notion of a service--ha? What lured
+  Me here, what mighty aim was I assured
+  Must move Taurello? What if there remained
+  A cause, intact, distinct from these, ordained
+  For me its true discoverer?"
+
+The mood here portrayed was one which might have been fostered in Browning
+in relation to his own time. He doubtless felt that neither the
+progressive movements in the state nor those in religion really touched
+upon the true principles of freedom for the individual. He might not have
+defined these principles to himself any more definitely than as a desire
+for the greatest happiness of the whole number. And even of such an ideal
+as that he had his doubts because of the necessity of his mind to find a
+logical use for evil in the world. This he could only do by supposing it a
+divine means for the development of the human soul in its sojourn in this
+life. Speaking in his own person in "Sordello," he gives expression to
+this doubt in the following passage in the third book:
+
+                          "I ask youth and strength
+  And health for each of you, not more--at length
+  Grown wise, who asked at home that the whole race
+  Might add the spirit's to the body's grace,
+  And all be dizened out as chiefs and bards.
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+              "----As good you sought
+  To spare me the Piazza's slippery stone
+  Or keep me to the unchoked canals alone,
+  As hinder Life the evil with the good
+  Which make up Living rightly understood."
+
+Still, though vague as to what the good for the whole people might be,
+there was no vagueness in his mind as to the people's right to possess the
+power to bring about their own happiness. Yet given the right principles,
+he would not have the attempt made to put them into practice all at once.
+
+His final attitude toward the problem of the best methods for bettering
+human conditions in the poem is, strictly speaking, that of the
+opportunist working a step toward his ideal rather than that of the
+revolutionist who would gain it by one leap. Sordello should realize that
+
+  "God has conceded two lights to a man--
+  One, of men's whole work, man's first
+  Step to the plan's completeness."
+
+Man's part is to take this first step, leaving the ultimate ideal to be
+worked out, as time goes, on by successive men. To reach at one bound the
+ideal would be to regard one's self as a god. Some such theory of action
+as this is the one which guides the Fabian socialist working in England
+to-day. Nothing is to be done to subvert the present order of society, but
+every opportunity is to be made the most of which will tend to the
+betterment of the conditions of the masses, until by degrees the
+socialist régime will become possible. Sordello was too much of the
+idealist to seize the opportunity when it came to him of helping the
+people by means of the Ghibelline power suddenly conferred upon him, and
+so he failed.
+
+This opportunist doctrine is one especially congenial to the English
+temperament and certainly has its practical advantages, if it is not so
+inspiring as the headlong idealism of a Pym, which just as surely has its
+disadvantages in the danger that the ideal will be ahead of humanity's
+power of seizing it and living it, and will therefore run the risk of
+being overturned by a reaction to the low plane of the past; especially
+does this danger become apparent when the way to the attainment of the
+ideal is paved with violence.
+
+While Browning was writing "Sordello," the preparation of which included a
+short trip to Italy, the Chartist agitation was going on in England. It
+may well, at that time, have been considered to demand an ideal beyond
+possibility of attainment, which was proved by its final utter
+annihilation. The workingmen's association led by Mr. Duncombe was
+responsible for a program in the form of a parliamentary petition which
+asked for six things. These were: universal suffrage, or the right of
+voting by every male of twenty-one years of age; vote by ballot; annual
+Parliaments; abolition of the property qualification for members of
+Parliament; members of Parliament to be paid for their services; equal
+electoral districts.
+
+There were two sorts of Chartists, moral-force Chartists and
+physical-force Chartists, the latter of whom did as much damage as
+possible in the agitation.
+
+The combined forces were led by Feargus O'Connor, an Irish barrister, who
+madly spent his force and energy for ten years in carrying forward the
+movement, and, at last, confronted by disagreement in the ranks of the
+Chartists and the Duke of Wellington and his troops, gave it up in
+despair. He was a martyr to the cause, for he took its failure so much to
+heart that he ended his days in a lunatic asylum.
+
+This final failure came many years after "Sordello" was finished, but the
+poet's conclusions in "Sordello" seem almost prophetic in the light of the
+passage in the poem already quoted, in which the poet declares himself
+grown wiser than he was at home, where he had asked the utmost for all
+men, and now realized that this cannot be attained in one leap.
+
+Agitation about the relations between England and Ireland were also
+filling public attention at this time, but most important of all the
+contemporary movements was the League for the Repeal of the Corn Laws. The
+story of the growth and the peaceful methods by which it attained its
+growth is one of the most interesting in the annals of England's political
+development. It meant the adoption of the great principle of free trade,
+to which England has since adhered. For eight years the agitation in
+regard to it was continued, during which great meetings were held,
+thousands of pounds were subscribed to the cause, and the names of Sir
+Richard Cobden and John Bright became famous as leaders in the righteous
+cause of untaxed food for the people. John Bright's account of how he
+became interested in the movement and associated himself with Cobden in
+the work, told in a speech made at Rochdale, gives a vivid picture of the
+human side of the problem which by the conservatives of the day was
+treated as a merely political issue:
+
+    "In the year 1841 I was at Leamington and spent several months there.
+    It was near the middle of September there fell upon me one of the
+    heaviest blows that can visit any man. I found myself living there
+    with none living of my house but a motherless child. Mr. Cobden
+    called upon me the day after that event, so terrible to me and so
+    prostrating. He said, after some conversation, 'Don't allow this
+    grief, great as it is, to weigh you down too much. There are at this
+    moment in thousands of homes in this country wives and children who
+    are dying of hunger--of hunger made by the law. If you come along with
+    me, we will never rest till we have got rid of the Corn Law.' We saw
+    the colossal injustice which cast its shadow over every part of the
+    nation, and we thought we saw the true remedy and the relief, and that
+    if we united our efforts, as you know we did, with the efforts of
+    hundreds and thousands of good men in various parts of the country, we
+    should be able to bring that remedy home, and to afford that relief to
+    the starving people of this country."
+
+The movement thus inaugurated was, as Molesworth declares, "without
+parallel in the history of the world for the energy with which it was
+conducted, the rapid advance it made, and the speedy and complete success
+that crowned its efforts; for the great change it wrought in public
+opinion and the consequent legislation of the country; overcoming
+prejudice and passion, dispelling ignorance and conquering powerful
+interests, with no other weapons than those of reason and that eloquence
+which great truths and strong conviction inspire."
+
+A signal victory for the League was gained in 1843, when the London
+_Times_, which up to that time had regarded the League with suspicion
+and even alarm, suddenly turned round and ranged itself with the advancing
+tide of progress by declaring, "The League is a great fact. It would be
+foolish, nay, rash, to deny its importance. It is a great fact that there
+should have been created in the homestead of our manufacturers
+(Manchester) a confederacy devoted to the agitation of one political
+question, persevering at it year after year, shrinking from no trouble,
+dismayed at no danger, making light of every obstacle. It demonstrates the
+hardy strength of purpose, the indomitable will, by which Englishmen
+working together for a great object are armed and animated."
+
+The final victory, however, did not come until three years later, when Sir
+Robert Peel, who became Prime Minister to defend the Corn Laws, announced
+that he had been completely convinced of their injustice, and that he was
+an "absolute convert to the free-trade principle, and that the
+introduction of the principle into all departments of our commercial
+legislation was, according to his intention, to be a mere question of time
+and convenience." This was in January, 1845, and shortly after, June,
+1846, the bill for the total repeal of the Corn Laws passed the House.
+
+How much longer it might have been before the opposition was carried is a
+question if it had not been for the failure of the grain crops and the
+widespread potato disease which plunged Ireland into a state of famine,
+and threatened the whole country with more or less of disaster.
+
+Even when this state of affairs became apparent in the summer of 1845
+there was still much delay. The Cabinet met and discussed and discussed;
+still Parliament was not assembled; and then it was that the Mansion House
+Relief Committee of Dublin drew up resolutions stating that famine and
+pestilence were approaching throughout the land, and impeaching the
+conduct of the Ministry for not opening the ports or calling Parliament
+together.
+
+But still Peel, already won over, could not take his Cabinet with him; he
+was forced to resign. Lord John Russell was called to form a ministry, but
+failed, when Peel was recalled, and the day was carried.
+
+Browning's brief but pertinent allusion to this struggle in "The
+Englishman in Italy" shows clearly how strongly his sympathies were with
+the League and how disgusted he was with the procrastination of Parliament
+in taking a perfectly obvious step for the betterment of the people.
+
+  "Fortnu, in my England at home,
+  Men meet gravely to-day
+  And debate, if abolishing Corn laws
+  Be righteous and wise
+  If 'twere proper, Scirocco should vanish
+  In black from the skies!"
+
+An occasional allusion or poem like this makes us aware from time to time
+of Browning's constant sympathy with any movement which meant good to the
+masses. Even if he had not written near the end of his life "Why I am a
+Liberal," there could be no doubt in any one's mind of his political
+ideals. In "The Lost Leader" is perhaps his strongest utterance upon the
+subject. The fact that it was called out by Wordsworth's lapse into
+conservatism after the horrors of the French Revolution had brought him
+and his _sans culotte_ brethren, Southey and Coleridge, to pause, a fact
+very possibly freshened in Browning's mind by Wordsworth's receiving a
+pension in 1842 and the poet-laureateship in 1843, does not affect the
+force of the poem as a personal utterance on the side of democracy.
+Browning, himself, considered the poem far too fierce as a portrayal of
+Wordsworth's case.[2] He evidently forgot Wordsworth, and thought only of
+a renegade liberal as he went on with the poem. It was written the same
+year that there occurred the last attempt to postpone the passing of the
+Anti-Corn Law Bill, when the intensity of feeling on the part of all who
+believed in progress was at its height, and the bare thought of a deserter
+from Liberal ranks would be enough to exasperate any man who had the
+nation's welfare at heart. That Browning's feeling at the time reached the
+point not only of exasperation but of utmost scorn for any one who was not
+on the liberal side is shown most forcibly in the bitter lines:
+
+  "Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
+    One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
+  One more devil's triumph and sorrow for angels,
+    One more wrong to man, one more insult to God!"
+
+Browning speaks of having thought of Wordsworth at an unlucky juncture.
+
+Whatever the exact episode which called forth the poem may have been, we
+are safe in saying that at a time when Disraeli was attacking Sir Robert
+Peel because of his honesty in avowing his conversion to free trade, and
+because of his bravery in coming out from his party, in breaking up his
+cabinet and regardless of all costs in determining to carry the bill or
+resign, and finally carrying it in the face of the greatest odds--at
+such a time, when a great conservative leader had shown himself capable of
+being won over to a great liberal principle; the spectacle of a deserter
+from the cause, and that deserter a member of one's own brotherhood of
+poets, would be especially hard to bear.
+
+One feels a little like asking why did not Browning let his enthusiasm
+carry him for once into a contemporary expression of admiration for Sir
+Robert Peel? Perhaps the tortuous windings of parliamentary proceedings
+obscured to a near view the true greatness of Peel's action.
+
+The year of this great change in England's policy was the year of Robert
+Browning's marriage and his departure for Italy, where he lived for
+fifteen years. During this time and for some years after his return to
+England there is no sign that he was taking any interest in the political
+affairs of his country. Human character under romantic conditions in a
+social environment, or the thought problems of the age, as we have already
+seen, occupied his attention, and for the subject matter of these he more
+often than not went far afield from his native country.
+
+In "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau" is the poet's first deliberate portrayal
+of a person of contemporary prominence in the political world. The
+alliance of Napoleon III with England brought his policy of government
+into strong contrast with that of the liberal leaders in English politics,
+a contrast which had been emphasized through Lord Palmerston's sympathy
+with the _coup d'état_.
+
+The news of the manner in which Louis Napoleon had carried out his policy
+of smashing the French constitution caused horror and consternation in
+England, and the Queen at once gave instructions that nothing should be
+done by her ambassador in Paris which could be in any way construed as an
+interference in the internal affairs of France. Already, however, Lord
+Palmerston had expressed to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs his
+entire approbation in the act of Napoleon and his conviction that he could
+not have acted otherwise than as he had done. When this was known, the
+Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, wrote Palmerston a letter, causing his
+resignation, which was accepted very willingly by the Queen. The letter
+was as follows:
+
+    "While I concur in the foreign policy of which you have been the
+    adviser, and much as I admire the energy and ability with which it has
+    been carried into effect, I cannot but observe that misunderstandings
+    perpetually renewed, violations of prudence and decorum too
+    frequently repeated, have marred the effects which ought to have
+    followed from a sound policy and able admirers. I am, therefore, most
+    reluctantly compelled to come to the conclusion that the conduct of
+    foreign affairs can no longer be left in your hands with advantage to
+    the country."
+
+When England's fears that Louis Napoleon would emulate his illustrious
+predecessor and invade her shores were allayed, her attitude was modified.
+She forgot the horrors of the _coup d'état_ and formed an alliance with
+him, and her hospitable island became his refuge in his downfall.
+
+A prominent figure in European politics for many years, Louis Napoleon had
+just that combination of greatness and mediocrity which would appeal to
+Browning's love of a human problem. Furthermore, Napoleon was brought very
+directly to the poet's notice through his Italian campaign and Mrs.
+Browning's interest in the political crisis in Italy, which found
+expression in her fine group of Italian patriotic poems.
+
+The question has been asked, "Will the unbiased judgment of posterity
+allow to Louis Napoleon some extenuating circumstances, or will it
+pronounce an unqualified condemnation upon the man who, for the sake of
+consolidating his own power and strengthening his corrupt government,
+spilled the blood of no less than a hundred thousand Frenchmen?"
+
+When all Europe was putting to itself some such question as this, and
+answering it with varying degrees of leniency, Browning conceived the idea
+of making Napoleon speak for himself, and at the same time he added what
+purports to be the sort of criticism of him indulged in by a Thiers or a
+Victor Hugo. The interest of the poem centers in Napoleon's own
+vindication of himself as portrayed by Browning. What Browning wrote of
+the poem in a letter to a friend in 1872 explains fully his aim, as well
+as showing by indirection, at least, how much he was interested in
+political affairs at this time, though so little of this interest crops
+out in his poetry: "I think in the main he meant to do what I say, and but
+for weakness--grown more apparent in his last years than formerly--would
+have done what I say he did not. I thought badly of him at the beginning
+of his career, _et pour cause_; better afterward, on the strength of the
+promises he made and gave indications of intending to redeem. I think him
+very weak in the last miserable year. At his worst I prefer him to
+Thiers's best." At another time he wrote: "I am glad you like what the
+editor of the _Edinburgh_ calls my eulogium on the Second Empire, which it
+is not, any more than what another wiseacre affirms it to be, 'a
+scandalous attack on the old constant friend of England.' It is just what
+I imagine the man might, if he pleased, say for himself."
+
+Browning depicts the man as perfectly conscious of his own limitations. He
+recognizes that he is not the genius, nor the creator of a new order of
+things, but that his power lies in his faculty of taking an old ideal and
+improving upon it. He contends that in following out his special gifts as
+a conservator he is doing just what God intended him to do, and as to his
+method of doing it that is his own affair. God gives him the commission
+and leaves it to his human faculties to carry it out, not inquiring what
+these are, but simply asking at the end if the commission has been
+accomplished.
+
+Once admit these two things--namely, that his nature, though not of the
+highest, is such as God gave him, and his lack of responsibility in regard
+to any moral ideal, so that he accomplishes the purpose of this
+nature--and a loophole is given for any inconsistencies he may choose to
+indulge in in bringing about that strengthening of an old ideal in which
+he believes. The old ideal is, of course, the monarchical principle of
+government, administered, however, in such a manner that it will be for
+the good of society in all its complex manifestations of to-day. His
+notion of society's good consists in a balancing of all its forces,
+secured by the smoothing down of any extreme tendencies, each having its
+orbit marked but no more, so that none shall impede the other's path.
+
+  "In this wide world--though each and all alike,
+  Save for [him] fain would spread itself through space
+  And leave its fellow not an inch of way."
+
+Browning makes him indulge in a curiously sophisticated view of the
+relativity of good and evil in the course of his argument, to the effect
+that since there is a further good conceivable beyond the utmost earth can
+realize, therefore to change the agency--the evil whereby good is brought
+about, try to make good do good as evil does--would be just as foolish as
+if a chemist wanting white and knowing that black ingredients were needed
+to make the dye insisted these should be white, too. A bad world is that
+which he experiences and approves. A good world he does not want in which
+there would be no pity, courage, hope, fear, sorrow, joy--devotedness, in
+short--which he believes form the ultimate allowed to man; therefore it
+has been his policy not to do away with the evil in the society he is
+saving. To mitigate, not to cure, has been his aim.
+
+Browning would, himself, answer the sophistry, here, by showing that evil
+though permitted by divine power was only a means of good through man's
+working against whatever he conceives to be evil with the whole strength
+of his being. To deliberately follow the policy of conserving evil would
+be in the end to annihilate the good. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau could
+not see so far as this.
+
+It is not astonishing that with such a policy as this his methods of
+carrying it out might seem somewhat dubious if not positively criminal.
+His departure from his early idealism is excused for the reason that
+idealism is not practicable when the region of talk is left for the real
+action of life. Every step in his own aggrandizement is apologized for on
+the ground that what needed to be accomplished could only be done by a
+strong hand and that strong hand his own. He was in fact an unprincipled
+utilitarian as Browning presents him, who spoiled even what virtue resides
+in utilitarianism by letting his care for saving society be too much
+influenced by his desire for personal glory. One ideal undertaking he
+permitted himself, the freeing of Italy from the Austrian yoke. But he was
+not strong enough for any such high flight of idealism, as the sequel
+proved.
+
+Browning does not bring out in the poem the Emperor's real reasons for
+stopping short in the Italian campaign, which certainly were sufficient
+from a practical standpoint, but as Archibald Forbes says in his "Life of
+Napoleon," should have been thought of before he published his program of
+freedom to Italy "from the Alps to the Adriatic." "Even when he addressed
+the Italians at Milan," continues Forbes, "the new light had not broken in
+upon him which revealed the strength of the quadrilateral, the cost of
+expelling the Austrians from Venetia, and the conviction that further
+French successes would certainly bring mobilized Germany into the field.
+That new light seems to have flashed upon Napoleon for the first time from
+the stern Austrian ranks on the day of Solferino. It was then he realized
+that should he go forward he would be obliged to attack in front an enemy
+entrenched behind great fortresses, and protected against any diversion on
+his flanks by the neutrality of the territories surrounding him."
+
+Mrs. Browning, whose consternation and grief over Villafranca broke out in
+burning verse, yet made a defence of Napoleon's action here which might
+have been worked into Browning's poem with advantage. She wrote to John
+Foster that while Napoleon's intervention in Italy overwhelmed her with
+joy it did not dazzle her into doubts as to the motive of it, "but
+satisfied a patient expectation and fulfilled a logical inference. Thus it
+did not present itself to my mind as a caprice of power, to be followed
+perhaps by an onslaught on Belgium and an invasion of England. Have we not
+watched for a year while every saddle of iniquity has been tried on the
+Napoleonic back, and nothing fitted? Wasn't he to crush Piedmontese
+institutions like so many eggshells? Was he ever going away with his army,
+and hadn't he occupied houses in Genoa with an intention of bombarding the
+city? Didn't he keep troops in the north after Villafranca on purpose to
+come down on us with a grand duke or a Kingdom of Etruria and Plon-Plon to
+rule it? And wouldn't he give back Bologna to the Pope?... Were not
+Cipriani, Farini and other patriots his 'mere creatures' in treacherous
+correspondence with the Tuileries 'doing his dirty work'?" Of such
+accusations as these the intelligent English journals were full, but she
+maintains that against "The Inane and Immense Absurd" from which they were
+born is to be set "a nation saved." She realized also how hard Napoleon's
+position in France must be to maintain "forty thousand priests with
+bishops of the color of Monseigneur d'Orleans and company, having, of
+course, a certain hold on the agricultural population which forms so large
+a part of the basis of the imperial throne. Then add to that the parties
+who use this Italian question as a weapon simply."
+
+Many of Napoleon's own statements have furnished Browning with the
+arguments used in the apology. After deliberately destroying the
+constitution, for example, and himself being the cause of the violence and
+bloodshed in Paris, he coolly addressed the people in the following
+strain, in which we certainly recognize Hohenstiel-Schwangau:
+
+"Frenchmen! the disturbances are appeased. Whatever may be the decision of
+the people, society is saved. The first part of my task is accomplished.
+The appeal to the nation, for the purpose of terminating the struggle of
+parties, I knew would not cause any serious risk to the public
+tranquillity. Why should the people have risen against me? If I do not
+any longer possess your confidence--if your ideas are changed--there is no
+occasion to make precious blood flow; it will be sufficient to place an
+adverse vote in the urn. I shall always respect the decision of the
+people."
+
+His cleverness in combining the idea of authority with that of the idea of
+obeying the will of the people is curiously illustrated in his speech at
+the close of his dictatorship, during which it must be confessed that he
+had done excellently well for the country--so well, indeed, that even the
+socialists were ready to cry "_Vive l'Empereur!_"
+
+    "While watching me reëstablish the institutions and reawaken the
+    memories of the Empire, people have repeated again and again that I
+    wished to reconstitute the Empire itself. If this had been so the
+    transformation would have been accomplished long ago; neither the
+    means nor the opportunities would have been lacking.... But I have
+    remained content with that I had. Resolved now, as heretofore, to do
+    all in my power for France and nothing for myself, I would accept any
+    modification of the present state of things only if forced by
+    necessity.... If parties remain quiet, nothing shall be changed. But
+    if they endeavor to sap the foundations of my government; if they deny
+    the legitimacy of the result of the popular vote; if, in short, they
+    continually put the future of the country in jeopardy, then, but only
+    then, it might be prudent to ask the people for a new title which
+    would irrevocably fix on my head the power with which they have
+    already clothed me. But let us not anticipate difficulties; let us
+    preserve the Republic. Under its banner I am anxious to inaugurate
+    once more an epoch of reconciliation and pardon; and I call on all
+    without distinction who will frankly coöperate with me for the public
+    good."
+
+In contrast to such fair-sounding phrases Napoleon was capable of the most
+dishonorable tactics in order to gain his ends. Witness the episode of his
+tempting Bismarck with offers of an alliance against Austria at the same
+time that he was treating secretly with Francis Joseph for the cession of
+Venetia in return for Silesia. And while negotiating secretly and
+separately with these two sworn enemies, he pretended to be so
+disinterested as to suggest the submission of their quarrel to a European
+congress.
+
+Browning has certainly presented a good portrait of the man as the history
+of his own utterances contrasted with the history of his actions proves.
+In trying to bridge with this apology the discrepancies between the two he
+has, however, attributed to Louis Napoleon a degree of self-consciousness
+beyond any ever evinced by him. The principle of imperialism was a
+conviction with him. That he desired to help the people of France and to a
+great extent succeeded, is true; that he combined with this desire the
+desire of power for himself is true; that he used unscrupulous means to
+gain whatever end he desired when such were necessary is true; but that he
+was conscious of his own despicable traits to the extent that the poet
+makes him conscious of them is most unlikely. Nor is it likely that he
+would defend himself upon any such subtle ground as that his character and
+temperament being the gift of God he was bound to follow out his nature in
+order that God's purposes might be accomplished. It is rather an
+explanation of his life from the philosopher's or psychologist's
+standpoint than a self-conscious revelation. It is none the less
+interesting on this account, while the scene setting gives it a thoroughly
+human and dramatic touch.
+
+Whatever may be said of Napoleon himself, his rule was fraught with
+consequences of import for the whole of Europe, not because of what he
+was, but because of what he was not. He was an object lesson on the
+fallacy of trying to govern so that all parties will be pleased by
+autocratically keeping each one from fully expressing itself. The result
+is that each grows more aware of the suppression than of the amount of
+freedom allowed to it, and nobody is pleased. When added to such a policy
+as this is the surmounting desire for power and the Machiavellian
+determination to attain it by any means, fair or foul, a principle of
+statecraft which by the middle of the century could not be practised in
+its most acute form without arousing the most severe criticism, his power
+carried within it the seeds of destruction.
+
+It has been said that "never in the history of the world has one man
+undertaken a task more utterly beyond the power of mortal man than that
+which Louis Napoleon was pledged to carry through." He professed to be at
+one and the same time the elect sovereign of the people, a son of the
+revolution, a champion of universal suffrage, and an adversary of the
+demagogues. In the first of these characters he was bound to justify his
+elevation by economic and social reforms, in his second character he had
+to destroy the last trace of political liberty. He had, in fact, assumed
+various utterly incompatible attitudes, and the day that the masses found
+themselves deceived in their expectations, and the middle classes found
+their interests were betrayed, reaction was inevitable.
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE]
+
+In spite of his heinous faults, however, historians have grown more and
+more inclined to admit that Napoleon filled for a time a necessary niche
+in the line of progress, just that step which Browning makes him say
+the genius will recognize that he fills--namely, to
+
+  "Carry the incompleteness on a stage,
+  Make what was crooked straight, and roughness smooth,
+  And weakness strong: wherein if I succeed,
+  It will not prove the worst achievement, sure
+  In the eyes at least of one man, one I look
+  Nowise to catch in critic company:
+  To-wit, the man inspired, the genius, self
+  Destined to come and change things thoroughly.
+  He, at least, finds his business simplified,
+  Distinguishes the done from undone, reads
+  Plainly what meant and did not mean this time
+  We live in, and I work on, and transmit
+  To such successor: he will operate
+  On good hard substance, not mere shade and shine."
+
+That is, at a time when Europe was seething with the idea of a new order,
+in which the ideal of nationality was to take the place of such decaying
+ideas as the divine right of kings, balance of power, and so on, Napoleon
+held on to these ideas just long enough to prevent a general
+disintegration of society. He held in his hands the balance of power until
+the nations began to find themselves, and in the case of Italy actually
+helped on the triumph of the new order.
+
+It is interesting to note in this connection that one of the principal
+factors in the making of Gladstone into the stanch liberal which he
+became was the freeing of Italy, in which Napoleon had so large a share.
+Gladstone himself wrote in 1892 of the events which occurred in the fifth
+decade: "Of the various and important incidents which associated me almost
+unawares with foreign affairs ... I will only say that they all
+contributed to forward the action of those home causes more continuous in
+their operation, which, without in any way effacing my old sense of
+reverence for the past, determined for me my place in the present and my
+direction toward the future." In 1859 Gladstone dined with Cavour at
+Turin, when the latter had the opportunity of explaining his position and
+policy to the man whom he considered "one of the sincerest and most
+important friends that Italy had." But as his biographer says, Gladstone
+was still far from the glorified democracy of the Mazzinian propaganda,
+and expressed his opinion that England should take the stand that she
+would be glad if Italian unity proved feasible, "but the conditions of it
+must be gradually matured by a course of improvement in the several
+states, and by the political education of the people; if it cannot be
+reached by these means, it hardly will by any others; and certainly not by
+opinions which closely link Italian reconstruction with European
+disorganization and general war." Yet he was as distressed as Mrs.
+Browning at the peace of Villafranca, about which he wrote: "I little
+thought to have lived to see the day when the conclusion of a peace should
+in my own mind cause disgust rather than impart relief." By the end of the
+year he thought better of Napoleon and expressed himself again somewhat in
+the same strain as Mrs. Browning, to the effect that the Emperor had
+shown, "though partial and inconsistent, indications of a genuine feeling
+for the Italians--and far beyond this he has committed himself very
+considerably to the Italian cause in the face of the world. When in reply
+to all that, we fling in his face the truce of Villafranca, he may
+reply--and the answer is not without force--that he stood single-handed in
+a cause when any moment Europe might have stood combined against him. We
+gave him verbal sympathy and encouragement, or at least criticism; no one
+else gave him anything at all. No doubt he showed then that he had
+undertaken a work to which his powers were unequal; but I do not think
+that, when fairly judged, he can be said to have given proof by that
+measure of insincerity or indifference."
+
+Gladstone's gradual and forceful emancipation into the ranks of the
+liberals may be followed in the fascinating pages of Morley's "Life," who
+at the end declares that his performances in the sphere of active
+government were beyond comparison. Gladstone's own summary of his career
+gives a glimpse of what these performances were as well as an
+interpretation of the century and England's future growth which indicate
+that had he had another twenty years in which to progress, perhaps fewer,
+he would beyond all doubt have become an out and out social democrat.
+
+    "The public aspect of the period which closes for me with the fourteen
+    years (so I love to reckon them) of my formal connection with
+    Midlothian is too important to pass without a word. I consider it as
+    beginning with the Reform Act of Lord Grey's government. That great
+    act was for England, improvement and extension: for Scotland it was
+    political birth, the beginning of a duty and a power, neither of which
+    had attached to the Scottish nation in the preceding period. I rejoice
+    to think how the solemnity of that duty has been recognized, and how
+    that power has been used. The threescore years offer as the pictures
+    of what the historian will recognize as a great legislative and
+    administrative period--perhaps, on the whole, the greatest in our
+    annals. It has been predominantly a history of emancipation--that is,
+    of enabling man to do his work of emancipation, political, economical,
+    social, moral, intellectual. Not numerous merely, but almost
+    numberless, have been the causes brought to issue, and in every one of
+    them I rejoice to think that, so far as my knowledge goes, Scotland
+    has done battle for the right.
+
+    "Another period has opened and is opening still--a period possibly of
+    yet greater moral dangers, certainly a great ordeal for those classes
+    which are now becoming largely conscious of power, and never
+    heretofore subject to its deteriorating influences. These have been
+    confined in their actions to the classes above them, because they were
+    its sole possessors. Now is the time for the true friend of his
+    country to remind the masses that their present political elevation is
+    owing to no principles less broad and noble than these--the love of
+    liberty, of liberty for all without distinction of class, creed or
+    country, _and the resolute preference of the interests of the whole_
+    to any interest, be it what it may, of a narrower scope."
+
+Mr. Gladstone entered Parliament at twenty-three, in 1832, and a year
+later Browning, at twenty-one, printed his first poem, "Pauline." The
+careers of the two men ran nearly parallel, for Browning died in 1889, on
+the day of the publication of his last volume of poems, and Gladstone's
+retirement from active life took place in 1894, shortly after the defeat
+of his second Home Rule Bill. Though there is nothing to show that these
+two men came into touch with each other during their life, and while it is
+probable that Browning would not have been in sympathy with many of the
+aspects of Gladstone's mentality, there is an undercurrent of similarity
+in their attitude of mind toward reform. The passage in "Sordello" already
+referred to, written in 1840, might be regarded almost as a prophecy of
+the sort of leader Gladstone became. I have said of that passage that it
+expressed the ideal of the opportunist, not that of the revolutionary.
+Opportunist Mr. Gladstone was often called by captious critics, but any
+unbiased reader following his career now as a whole will see, as Morley
+points out, that whenever there was a chance of getting anything done it
+was generally found that he was the only man with courage and resolution
+enough to attempt it.
+
+A distinction should be made between that sort of opportunism which
+_waits_ upon the growth of conditions favorable to the taking of a short
+step in amelioration, and what might be called militant opportunism,
+which, at all times, seizes every opportunity to take a step in the
+direction of an evolving, all-absorbing ideal. Is not this the opportunism
+of both a Browning and a Gladstone? Such a policy at least tacitly
+acknowledges that the law of evolution is the law that should be followed,
+and that the mass of the people as well as the leader have their share in
+the unfolding of the coming ideal, though their part in it may be less
+conscious than his and though they may need his leadership to make the
+steps by the way clear.
+
+The other political leader of the Victorian era with whom Gladstone came
+most constantly into conflict was Disraeli, of whom Browning in "George
+Bubb Dodington" has given a sketch in order to draw a contrast between the
+unsuccessful policy of a charlatan of the Dodington type and that of one
+like Disraeli. The skeptical multitude of to-day cannot be taken in by
+declarations that the politician is working only for their good, and if he
+frankly acknowledged that he is working also for his own good they would
+have none of him. The nice point to be decided is how shall he work for
+his own good and yet gain control of the multitude. Dodington did not know
+the secret, but according to Browning Disraeli did, and what is the
+secret? It seems to be an attitude of absolute self-assurance, a disregard
+of consistency, a scorn of the people he is dealing with, and a pose
+suggesting the play of supernatural forces in his life.
+
+This is a true enough picture of the real Disraeli, who seems to have had
+a leaning toward a belief in spiritualism, and who was notorious for his
+unblushing changes of opinion and for a style of oratory in which his
+points were made by clever invective and sarcasm hurled at his opponents
+instead of by any sound, logical argument, it being, indeed one of his
+brilliant discoveries that "wisdom ought to be concealed under folly, and
+consistency under caprice."
+
+Many choice bits of history might be given in illustration of Browning's
+portrayal of him; for example, speaking against reform, he exclaims:
+"Behold the late Prime Minister and the Reform Ministry! The spirited and
+snow-white steeds have gradually changed into an equal number of sullen
+and obstinate donkeys, while Mr. Merryman, who, like the Lord Chancellor,
+was once the very life of the ring, now lies his despairing length in the
+middle of the stage, with his jokes exhausted and his bottle empty."
+
+As a specimen of his quickness in retort may be cited an account of an
+episode which occurred at the time when he came out as the champion of the
+Taunton Blues. In the course of his speech he "enunciated," says an
+anonymous writer of the fifties, "one of those daring historical paradoxes
+which are so signally characteristic of the man: 'Twenty years ago' said
+the Taunton Blue hero, 'tithes were paid in Ireland more regularly than
+now!'
+
+"Even his supporters appeared astounded by this declaration.
+
+"'How do you know?' shouted an elector.
+
+"'I have read it,' replied Mr. Disraeli.
+
+"'Oh, oh!' exclaimed the elector.
+
+"'I know it,' retorted Disraeli, 'because I have read, and you' (looking
+daggers at his questioner) 'have not.'
+
+"This was considered a very happy rejoinder by the friends of the
+candidate, and was loudly cheered by the Blues.
+
+"'Didn't you write a novel?' again asked the importunate elector, not very
+much frightened even by Mr. Disraeli's oratorical thunder and the
+sardonical expression on his face.
+
+"'I have certainly written a novel,' Mr. Disraeli replied; 'but I hope
+there is no disgrace in being connected with literature.'
+
+"'You are a curiosity of literature, you are,' said the humorous elector.
+
+"'I hope,' said Mr. Disraeli, with great indignation, 'there is no
+disgrace in having written that which has been read by hundreds of
+thousands of my fellow-countrymen, and which has been translated into
+every European language. I trust that one who is an author by the gift of
+nature may be as good a man as one who is Master of the Mint by the gift
+of Lord Melbourne.' Great applause then burst forth from the Blues. Mr.
+Disraeli continued, 'I am not, however, the puppet of the Duke of
+Buckingham, as one newspaper has described me; while a fellow laborer in
+the same vineyard designated me the next morning, "the Marleybone
+Radical." If there is anything on which I figure myself it is my
+consistency.'
+
+"'Oh, oh!' exclaimed many hearers.
+
+"'I am prepared to prove it,' said Mr. Disraeli, with menacing energy. 'I
+am prepared to prove it, and always shall be, either in the House of
+Commons or on the hustings, considering the satisfactory manner in which I
+have been attacked, but I do not think the attack will be repeated.'"
+
+It seems extraordinary that such tactics of bluff could take a man onward
+to the supreme place of Prime Minister. Possibly it was just as much owing
+to his power to amuse as to any of the causes brought out by Browning. Is
+there anything the majority of mankind loves more than a laugh?
+
+The conflicts of Disraeli and Gladstone form one of the most remarkable
+episodes of nineteenth-century politics. One is tempted to draw a parallel
+between Napoleon III and Disraeli, whose tactics were much the same,
+except that Disraeli was backed up by a much keener intellect. Possibly he
+held a part in English politics similar to that held by Napoleon in
+European politics--that is, he conserved the influences of the past long
+enough to make the future more sure of itself. Browning, however,
+evidently considered him nothing more than a successful charlatan.
+
+When Browning wrote, "Why I Am a Liberal," in 1885, liberalism in English
+politics had reached its climax in the nineteenth century through the
+introduction by Mr. Gladstone, then Premier for the third time, of his
+Home Rule Bill. The injustices suffered by the Irish people and the
+horrible atrocities resulting from these had had their effect upon Mr.
+Gladstone and had taken him the last great step in his progress toward
+freedom. The meeting at which this bill was introduced has been described
+as the greatest legislative assembly of modern times. The House was full
+to overflowing, and in a brilliant speech of nearly four hours the veteran
+leader held his audience breathless as he unfolded his plans for the
+betterment of Irish conditions. We are told that during the debates that
+followed there was a remarkable exhibition of feeling--"the passions, the
+enthusiasm, the fear, and hope, and fury and exultation, sweeping, now
+the surface, now stirring to its depths the great gathering." The bill,
+which included, besides the founding of an Irish Parliament in Dublin,
+which would have the power to deal with all matters "save the Crown, the
+Army and Navy, Foreign and Colonial Policy, Trade, Navigation, Currency,
+Imperial Taxation, and the Endowment of Churches," also provided that
+Ireland should annually contribute to the English exchequer the sum of
+£3,243,000.
+
+Eloquence, enthusiasm, exultation--all came to naught. The bill did not
+even suit the liberals, the bargain from a financial point of view being
+regarded as hard. It was defeated in Parliament and fared no better when
+an appeal was made to the country, and Mr. Gladstone resigned. In nine
+months, however, a general election returned him to office again, and
+again he introduced a Home Rule Bill, and though it passed the Commons, it
+was overwhelmingly defeated in the House of Lords.
+
+It is pleasant to reflect that in this last act of a noble and brilliant
+career spent in the interests of the ever-growing ideals of democracy
+Gladstone had the sympathy of Browning, shown by his emphatic expression
+of "liberal sentiments" at a momentous crisis, when a speech on the
+liberal side even from the mouth of a poet counted for much.
+
+As we have seen, the reflections in Browning's poetry of his interest in
+public affairs are comparatively few, yet such glimpses as he has given
+prove him, beyond all doubt, to have been a democrat in principle, to have
+arrived, in fact, at the beginning of his career at a point beyond that
+attained by England's rulers at the end of the century. This far-sighted
+vision of his may have been another reason to be added to those mentioned
+at the beginning of the chapter why his interest in the practical affairs
+of his country did not more often express itself. The wrangling, the
+inconsequentialness, the eloquence expended upon mere personal interests
+which make up by far the larger proportion of all political agitation, are
+irritating to the last degree to a man of vision. His part was that of the
+philosopher and artist--to watch and to record in the portrayal of his
+many characters the underlying principle of freedom, which was the guiding
+star in all his work.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+SOCIAL IDEALS
+
+
+Browning's social ideals revolve about a trinity of values: the value of
+love, the value of truth, the value of evil. His ethics are the natural
+outgrowth of his mysticism and his idealism, with no touch of the
+utilitarianism which has been a distinctive mark of the fabric of English
+society during the nineteenth century, nor, on the other hand, of the
+hidebound conventionalism which has limited personal freedom in ways
+detrimental to just those aspects of social morality it was most anxious
+to preserve.
+
+The fact of which Browning seemed more conscious than of any other fact of
+his existence, and which, as we have seen, was the very core of his
+mysticism, was feeling. Things about which an ordinary man would feel no
+emotion at all start in his mind a train of thoughts, ending only in the
+perception of divine love. The eating of a palatable fig fills his heart
+with such gratefulness to the giver of the fig that immediately he fares
+forth upon the way which brings him into the presence of the Prime Giver
+from whom all gifts are received. What ecstasy of feeling in the artist
+aspiring through his art to the higher regions of Absolute Beauty in "Abt
+Vogler" of the poet who loves, aspiring to the divine through his human
+love in the epilogue to "Ferishtah's Fancies!" The perception of feeling
+was so intense that it became in him exalted and concentrated, incapable
+of dissipating itself in ephemeral sentimentalities, and this it is which
+gives feeling to Browning its mystical quality, and puts personal love
+upon the plane of a veritable revelation.
+
+Though reports have often floated about in regard to his attachments to
+other women after Mrs. Browning's death, the fact remains that he did not
+marry again, that he wrote the lyrics in "Ferishtah's Fancies," and the
+sonnet to Edward Fitzgerald just before his death, and thirty years after
+his wife's death. Moreover, in the epilogue to "The Two Poets of Croisic"
+he gives a hint of what might be his attitude toward any other women who
+may have come into his life, in the application of the tale of the cricket
+chirping "love" in the place of the broken string of a poet's lyre--
+
+  "For as victory was nighest,
+    While I sang and played,
+  With my lyre at lowest, highest,
+    Right alike--one string that made
+    Love sound soft was snapt in twain,
+    Never to be heard again,----
+
+  "Had not a kind cricket fluttered,
+    Perched upon the place
+  Vacant left, and duly uttered,
+    'Love, Love, Love,' when'er the bass
+    Asked the treble to atone
+    For its somewhat sombre drone."
+
+These rare qualities of constancy, exaltation and aspiration, in love
+sublimating it into a spiritual emotion, which was evidently the
+distinctive mark of Browning's personality on the emotional side,
+furnishes the keynote by which his presentation or solution of the social
+problems involved in the relations of men and women is always to be
+gauged.
+
+He had been writing ten years when he essayed his first serious
+presentation of what we might to-day call a problem play on an English
+subject in "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon." In all of his long poems and in
+many of his short ones personal love had been portrayed under various
+conditions--between friends or lovers, husband and wife, or father and
+son, and in every instance it is a dominating influence in the action, as
+we have already seen it to be in "Strafford." Again, in "King Victor and
+King Charles" the action centers upon Charles's love for his father, and
+is also moulded in many ways by Polyxena's love for her husband, Charles.
+
+But a perception of the possible heights to be obtained by the passion of
+romantic love only fully emerges in "Pippa Passes," for example in
+Ottima's vision of the reality of her own love, despite her great sin as
+contrasted with that of Sebald's, and in Jules's rising above the
+conventionally low when he discovers he has been duped, and perceiving in
+Phene a purity of soul which no earthly conditions had been able to sully,
+
+  "Who, what is Lutwyche, what Natalia's friends,
+  What the whole world except our love--my own,
+  Own Phene?...
+  I do but break these paltry models up
+  To begin art afresh ...
+  Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!
+  Like a god going through the world there stands
+  One mountain for a moment in the dusk,
+  Whole brotherhoods of cedars on its brow:
+  And you are ever by me while I gaze
+  --Are in my arms as now--as now--as now!
+  Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!
+  Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas!"
+
+Again, in "The Return of the Druses" there is a complicated clash between
+the ideal of religious reverence for the incarnation of divinity in Djabal
+and human love for him in the soul of Anael, resulting at the end in the
+destruction of the idea of Djabal's supernatural divinity, and his
+reinstatement perceived by Anael as divine through the complete exaltation
+of his human love for Anael.
+
+These examples, however, while they illustrate Browning's attitude toward
+human love, are far enough removed from nineteenth-century conditions in
+England. In "Pippa," the social conditions of nineteenth-century Italy are
+reflected; in "The Druses," the religious conditions of the Druse nation
+in the fifteenth century.
+
+In the "Blot in the 'Scutcheon" a situation is developed which comes home
+forcibly to the nineteenth-century Englishman despite the fact that the
+scene is supposed to be laid in the eighteenth century. The poet's
+treatment of the clash between the ideal, cherished by an old and honored
+aristocratic family of its own immaculate purity, and the spontaneous,
+complete and exalted love of the two young people who in their ecstasy
+transcend conventions, illustrates, as perhaps no other situation could,
+his reverential attitude upon the subject of love. Gwendolen, the older,
+intuitional woman, and Mertoun, the young lover, are the only people in
+the play to realize that purity may exist although the social enactments
+upon which it is supposed to depend have not been complied with. Tresham
+learns it only when he has wounded Mertoun unto death; Mildred never
+learns it. The grip of conventional teaching has sunk so deeply into her
+nature that she feels her sin unpardonable and only to be atoned for by
+death. Mertoun, as he dies, gives expression to the essential purity and
+truth of his nature in these words:
+
+                                      "Die along with me,
+  Dear Mildred! 'tis so easy, and you'll 'scape
+  So much unkindness! Can I lie at rest,
+  With rude speech spoken to you, ruder deeds
+  Done to you?--heartless men shall have my heart
+  And I tied down with grave-clothes and the worm,
+  Aware, perhaps, of every blow--O God!--
+  Upon those lips--yet of no power to bear
+  The felon stripe by stripe! Die Mildred! Leave
+  Their honorable world to them! For God
+  We're good enough, though the world casts us out."
+
+This is only one of many instances which go to show that Browning's
+conception of love might include, on the one hand, a complete freedom
+from the trammels imposed upon it by conventional codes of morality, but
+on the other, was so real and permanent a sympathy between two souls, and
+so absolute a revelation of divine beauty, that its morality far
+transcended that of the conventional codes, which under the guise of
+lawful alliances permit and even encourage marriages based upon the most
+external of attractions, or those entered into for merely social or
+commercial reasons. A sin against love seems in Browning's eyes to come
+the nearest of all human failings to the unpardonable sin.
+
+It must not be supposed from what has been said that he had any
+anarchistic desire to do away with the solemnization of marriage, but his
+eyes were wide open to the fact that there might be sin within the
+marriage bond, and just as surely that there might be love pure and true
+outside of it.
+
+Another illustration of Browning's belief in the existence of a love such
+as Shakespeare describes, which looks on tempests and is never shaken, is
+given in the "Inn Album." Here, again, the characters are all English, and
+the story is based upon an actual occurrence. Such changes as Browning
+has made in the story are with the intention of pitting against the
+villainy of an aristocratic seducer of the lowest type a bourgeois young
+man, who has been in love with the betrayed woman, and who when he finds
+out that it was this man, his friend, who had stood between them, does not
+swerve from his loyalty and truth to her, and in the end avenges her by
+killing the aristocratic villain. The young man is betrothed to a girl he
+cares nothing for, the woman has married a man she cares nothing for. All
+is of no moment in the presence of a genuine loyal emotion which shows
+itself capable of a life of devotion with no thought of reward.
+
+Browning has nowhere translated into more noble action the love of a man
+than in the passage where the hero of the story gives himself unselfishly
+to the woman who has been so deeply wronged:
+
+                            "Take heart of hers,
+  And give her hand of mine with no more heart
+  Than now, you see upon this brow I strike!
+  What atom of a heart do I retain
+  Not all yours? Dear, you know it! Easily
+  May she accord me pardon when I place
+  My brow beneath her foot, if foot so deign,
+  Since uttermost indignity is spared--
+  Mere marriage and no love! And all this time
+  Not one word to the purpose! Are you free?
+  Only wait! only let me serve--deserve
+  Where you appoint and how you see the good!
+  I have the will--perhaps the power--at least
+  Means that have power against the world. Fortune--
+  Take my whole life for your experiment!
+  If you are bound--in marriage, say--why, still,
+  Still, sure, there's something for a friend to do,
+  Outside? A mere well-wisher, understand!
+  I'll sit, my life long, at your gate, you know,
+  Swing it wide open to let you and him
+  Pass freely,--and you need not look, much less
+  Fling me a '_Thank you!--are you there, old friend?_'
+  Don't say that even: I should drop like shot!
+  So I feel now, at least: some day, who knows?
+  After no end of weeks and months and years
+  You might smile! '_I believe you did your best!_'
+  And that shall make my heart leap--leap such leap
+  As lands the feet in Heaven to wait you there!
+  Ah, there's just one thing more! How pale you look!
+  Why? Are you angry? If there's after all,
+  Worst come to worst--if still there somehow be
+  The shame--I said was no shame,--none, I swear!--
+  In that case, if my hand and what it holds,--
+  My name,--might be your safeguard now,--at once--
+  Why, here's the hand--you have the heart."
+
+The genuine lovers in Browning's gallery will occur to every reader of
+Browning: lovers who are not deterred by obstacles, like Norbert, lovers
+like Miranda, devoted to a woman with a "past"; like the lover in "One Way
+of Love," who still can say, "Those who win heaven, blest are they."
+Sometimes there is a problem to be solved, sometimes not. Whenever there
+is a problem, however, it is solved by Browning on the side of sincerity
+and truth, never on the side of convention.
+
+Take, for example, "The Statue and the Bust," which many have considered
+to uphold an immoral standard and of which its defenders declare that the
+moral point of the story lies not in the fact that the lady and the Duke
+wished to elope with each other but that they never had strength enough of
+mind to do so. Considering what an entirely conventional and loveless
+marriage this of the lady and the Duke evidently was we cannot suppose, in
+the light of Browning's solution of similar situations, that he would have
+thought it any great crime if the Duke and the lady had eloped, since
+there was so genuine an attraction between them. But he does word his
+climax, it must be confessed, in a way to leave a loophole of doubt on the
+subject for those who do not like to be scandalized by their Browning:
+"Let a man contend to the uttermost for his life's set prize, be it what
+it will!"
+
+There is a saving grace to be extracted from the last line.
+
+  "--The sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
+  Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
+  Though the end in sight was a vice, I say."
+
+In "The Ring and the Book," the problem is similar to that in the "Inn
+Album," except that the villain in the case is the lawful husband. The
+lover, Caponsacchi, under different conditions demanding that he shall not
+give the slightest expression to his love, rises to a reverential height
+which even some of Browning's readers seem to doubt as possible.
+Caponsacchi is, however, too much under the spell of Catholic theology to
+see the mystical meaning of the love which he acknowledges in his own soul
+for Pompilia. In this poem it is Pompilia who is given the divine vision.
+If I may resay what I have said in another connection,[3] there is no
+moral struggle in Pompilia's short life such as that in Caponsacchi's.
+Both were alike in the fact that up to a certain point in their lives
+their full consciousness was unawakened: hers slept, through innocence and
+ignorance; his, in spite of knowledge, through lack of aspiration. She was
+rudely awakened by suffering; he by the sudden revelation of a possible
+ideal. Therefore, while for him, conscious of his past failures, a
+struggle begins: for her, conscious of no failure in her duty, which she
+had always followed according to her light, there simply continues duty
+according to the new light. Neither archbishop nor friendly "smiles and
+shakes of head" could weaken her conviction that, being estranged in soul
+from her husband, her attitude toward him was inevitable. No qualms of
+conscience troubled her as to her inalienable right to fly from him. That
+she submitted as long as she did was only because no one could be found to
+aid her. And how quick and certain her defence of Caponsacchi, threatened
+by Guido, when he overtakes them at the Inn! As she thinks over it calmly
+afterward, she makes no apology, but justifies her action as the voice of
+God.
+
+  "If I sinned so--never obey voice more.
+  O, the Just and Terrible, who bids us 'Bear.'
+  Not--'Stand by; bear to see my angels bear!'"
+
+The gossip over her flight with Caponsacchi does not trouble her as it
+does him. He saved her in her great need; the supposition that their
+motives for flight had any taint of impurity in them is too puerile to be
+given a thought, yet with the same sublime certainty of the right,
+characteristic of her, she acknowledges, at the end, her love for
+Caponsacchi, and looks for its fulfilment in the future when marriage
+shall be an interpenetration of souls that know themselves into one.
+Having attained so great a good she can wish none of the evil she has
+suffered undone. She goes a step farther. Not only does she accept her own
+suffering for the sake of the final supreme good to herself, but she feels
+assured that good will fall at last to those who worked the evil.
+
+In her absolute certainty of her realization of an unexpressed love in a
+future existence, she is only equaled in Browning's poetry by the speaker
+in "Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead."
+
+That Browning's belief in the mystical quality of personal love never
+changed is shown by the fact that near the end of his life, in the
+"Parleying" with Daniel Bartoli, he treats a love romance based upon fact
+in a way to emphasize this same truth which so constantly appears in his
+earlier work. The lady in this case, who is of the people, having been
+offered a bribe by the King which will mean the dishonoring of herself and
+her husband, and which if she does not accept will mean her complete
+separation from her husband, instantly decides against the bribe. She
+prefers love in spirit in a convent to the accepting of the King's
+promise that she will be made much of in court if she will sign a paper
+agreeing that her husband shall at once cede his dukedoms to the King. She
+explains her attitude to the Duke, who hesitates in his decision,
+whereupon she leaves and saves his honor for him, but his inability to
+decide at once upon the higher ground of spiritual love reveals to her the
+inadequacy of his love as compared with her own and kills her love for
+him. She later, however, marries a man who was only a boy of ten at the
+time of this episode, and their life together was a dream of happiness.
+But she dies and the devoted husband becomes a man of the world again. The
+Duke, however, has a streak of genuineness in his nature after all.
+Although carried away by the charms of a bold, black-eyed, tall creature,
+a development in keeping with the nature of the Duke in the true story,
+Browning is equal to the occasion, and makes him declare that the real man
+in him is dead and is still faithful to the old love. All she has is his
+ghost. Some day his soul will again be called into life by his ideal love.
+
+The poet frequently expresses a doubt of man's power to be faithful to the
+letter in case of a wife's death. "Any wife to any husband" reveals that
+feeling as it comes to a woman. The poet's answer to this doubt is
+invariably, that where the love was true other attraction is a makeshift
+by which a desolate life is made tolerable, or, as in "Fifine at the
+Fair," an ephemeral indulgence in pleasure which does not touch the
+reality of the spiritual love.
+
+Browning was well aware that the ordinary woman had a stronger sense of
+the eternal in love than the ordinary man. In relation to the Duke in the
+poem previously mentioned he remarks:
+
+  "One leans to like the duke, too; up we'll patch
+  Some sort of saintship for him--not to match
+  Hers--but man's best and woman's worst amount
+  So nearly to the same thing, that we count
+  In man a miracle of faithfulness
+  If, while unfaithful somewhat, he lay stress
+  On the main fact that love, when love indeed,
+  Is wholly solely love from first to last--
+  Truth--all the rest a lie."
+
+It may be said that all this is the romantic love about which the poets
+have always sung, and has as much existence in real life as the ideal of
+disinterested helpfulness to lovelorn damsels sung about in the days of
+chivalry. True, others have sung of the exaltation and the immortality of
+love, and few have been those who have found it, but nowhere has the
+distinctively human side been touched with such reverence as in Browning.
+It is not Beatrice translated into a divine personage to be adored by a
+worshipping devotee, but a wholly human woman who loves and is loved, who
+touches divinity in Browning's mind. Human love is then not an impossible
+ideal of which he writes in poetic language existing only in the realm of
+fancy; it is a living religion, bringing those who love nearer to God
+through the exaltation of their feeling than any other revelation of the
+human soul. Other states of consciousness reveal to humanity the existence
+of the absolute, but this gives a premonition of what divine love may have
+in store for the aspiring soul.
+
+In holding to such an ideal of love as this Browning has ranged himself
+entirely apart from the main tendencies of thought of the century, on the
+relations of men and women, which have, on the one hand, been wholly
+conventional, marriage being a contract under the law binding for life
+except in cases of definite breaches of conduct, and under the Church of
+affection which is binding only for life; and have, on the other hand,
+gone extreme lengths in the advocacy of entire freedom in the relations
+of the sexes. The first degrades love by making it too much a matter of
+law, the second by making it an ephemeral passion from which almost
+everything truly beautiful in the relationship of two human beings is, of
+necessity, eliminated.
+
+To either of these extreme factions Browning's attitude is equally
+incomprehensible. The first cries out against his liberalness, the second,
+declaring that human emotion should be untrammeled by either Church, law
+or God, would find him a pernicious influence against freedom; there are,
+however, many shades of opinion between the two extremes which would feel
+sympathy with his ideals in one or more directions.
+
+The chief difficulty in the acceptance of the ideal for most people is
+that they have not yet developed to the plane where feeling comes to them
+with the intensity, the concentration, the depth or the constancy that
+brings with it the sense of revelation. For many people law or the Church
+is absolutely necessary to preserve such feeling as they are capable of
+from dissipating itself in shallow sentimentalism; while one or the other
+will always be necessary in some form because love has its social as well
+as its personal aspect.
+
+Yet the law and the Church should both allow sufficient freedom for the
+breaking of relations from which all sincerity has departed, even though
+humanity as a whole has not yet and probably will not for many ages arrive
+at Browning's conception of human love.
+
+Truth to one's own highest vision in love being a cardinal principle with
+Browning, it follows that truth to one's nature in any direction is
+desirable. He even carries this doctrine of truth to the individual nature
+so far as to base upon it an apology for the most unmitigated villain he
+has portrayed, Guido, and to put this apology into the mouth of the person
+he had most deeply wronged, Pompilia. With exquisite vision she, even, can
+say:
+
+  "But where will God be absent! In his face
+  Is light, but in his shadow healing too:
+  Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed!
+  And as my presence was unfortunate,--
+  My earthly good, temptation and a snare,--
+  Nothing about me but drew somehow down
+  His hate upon me,--somewhat so excused
+  Therefore, since hate was thus the truth of him,--
+  May my evanishment for evermore
+  Help further to relieve the heart that cast
+  Such object of its natural loathing forth!
+  So he was made; he nowise made himself:
+  I could not love him, but his mother did."
+
+It is this notion that every nature must express its own truth which
+underlies a poem like "Fifine at the Fair." Through expressing the truth
+of itself, and so grasping at half truths, even at the false, it finally
+reaches a higher truth. A nature like Guido's was not born with a faculty
+for development. He simply had to live out his own hate. The man in
+"Fifine" had the power of perceiving an ideal, but not the power of living
+up to it without experimentation upon lower planes of living, probably the
+most common type of man to-day. There are others like Norbert or Mertoun,
+in whom the ideal truth is the real truth of their natures and for whom
+life means the constant expansion of this ideal truth within them. In many
+of the varying types of men and women portrayed by Browning there is the
+recognition of the possibility of psychic development either by means of
+experience or by sudden intuitions, and if, as in the case of Guido, there
+is no development in this life, there is hope in a future existence in a
+universe ruled by a God of love.
+
+In his views upon human character and its possibilities of development
+Browning is, of course, in touch with the scientific views on the subject
+which filled the air in all later nineteenth-century thought, changing the
+orthodox ideal of a static humanity born in sin and only to be saved by
+belief in certain dogmas to that of a humanity born to develop; changing
+the notion that sin was a terrible and absolutely defined entity, against
+which every soul had ceaselessly to war, into the notion that sin is a
+relative evil, consequent upon lack of development, which, as the human
+soul advances on its path, led by its inborn consciousness of the divine
+to be attained, will gradually disappear.
+
+But the evil which results from this lack of development in individuals to
+other individuals, and to society at large, brings a problem which as we
+have already seen in the first chapter is not so easy of solution. Yet
+Browning solves it, for is it not through the combat with this evil that
+the soul is given its real opportunity for development? Pain and suffering
+give rise to the thirst for happiness and joy, and through the arousing of
+sympathy and pity, the desire that others shall have happiness and joy,
+therefore to be despairing and pessimistic about evil or to wish for its
+immediate annihilation would really be suicidal to the best interests of
+the human race; nay, he even goes farther than this, as is hinted in one
+of his last poems, "Rephan," and imagines that any other state than one
+of flux between good and evil would be monotonous:
+
+  "Startle me up, by an Infinite
+  Discovered above and below me--height
+  And depth alike to attract my flight,
+
+  "Repel my descent: by hate taught love.
+  Oh, gain were indeed to see above
+  Supremacy ever--to move, remove,
+
+  "Not reach--aspire yet never attain
+  To the object aimed at! Scarce in vain,--
+  As each stage I left nor touched again.
+
+  "To suffer, did pangs bring the loved one bliss,
+  Wring knowledge from ignorance:--just for this--
+  To add one drop to a love--abyss!
+
+  "Enough: for you doubt, you hope, O men,
+  You fear, you agonize, die: what then?
+  Is an end to your life's work out of ken?
+
+  "Have you no assurance that, earth at end,
+  Wrong will prove right? Who made shall mend
+  In the higher sphere to which yearnings tend?"
+
+In his attitude toward the existence of evil Browning takes issue with
+Carlyle, as already noted in the second chapter. Carlyle, as Browning
+represents him, cannot reconcile the existence of evil with beneficent and
+omniscient power. He makes the opponent, who is an echo of Carlyle in the
+argument in "Bernard de Mandeville," exclaim:
+
+                                        "Where's
+  Knowledge, where power and will in evidence
+  'Tis Man's-play merely! Craft foils rectitude,
+  Malignity defeats beneficence,
+  And grant, at very last of all, the feud
+  'Twixt good and evil ends, strange thoughts intrude
+  Though good be garnered safely and good's foe
+  Bundled for burning. Thoughts steal even so--
+  Why grant tares leave to thus o'ertop, o'ertower
+  Their field-mate, boast the stalk and flaunt the flower,
+  Triumph one sunny minute?"
+
+No attempt must be made to show God's reason for allowing evil. Any such
+attempt will fail. This passage comes as near as any in Browning to a
+plunge into the larger social questions which during the nineteenth
+century have come more and more to the front, and is an index of just
+where the poet stood in relation to the social movements of the century's
+end. His gaze was so centered upon the individual and the power of the
+individual to work out his own salvation and the need of evil in the
+process that his philosophical attitude toward evil quite overtops the
+militant interest in overcoming it.
+
+Carlyle, on the other hand, saw the immense evil of the social conditions
+in England, and raged and stormed against them, but could see no light by
+which evil could be turned into good. He little realized that his own
+storming at the ineptitude, the imbecility, the fool-ness of society, and
+his own despair over the, to him, unaccountable evils of existence, were
+in themselves a positive good growing out of the evil. Though he was not
+to suggest practical means for leading the masses out of bondage, he was
+to call attention in trumpet tones to the fact that the bondage existed.
+By so doing he was taking a first step or rather drawing aside the curtain
+and revealing the dire necessity that steps should be taken and taken
+soon. While Carlyle was militantly shouting against evil to some purpose
+which would later mean militant action against it, Browning was settling
+in his own mind just what relation evil should hold to good in the scheme
+of the universe, and writing a poem to tell why he was a liberal. In fine,
+Carlyle was opening the way toward the socialism of the latter part of the
+century, while Browning was still found in the camp of what the socialist
+of to-day calls the middle-class individualist.
+
+Liberalism, which had taken on social conditions to the point through
+legislation where every man was free to be a property holder if he could
+manage to become one, and to amass wealth, left out of consideration the
+fact that he never could be free as long as he had to compete with
+every other man in the state to get these things. Hence the movement of
+the working classes to gain freedom by substituting for a competitive form
+of society a coöperative form. Great names in literature and art have
+helped toward the on-coming of this movement. Carlyle had railed at the
+millions of the English nation, "mostly fools;" Ruskin had bemoaned the
+enthronement of ugliness as the result of the industrial conditions;
+Matthew Arnold had proposed a panacea for the ills of the social condition
+in the bringing about of social equality through culture, and, best of
+all, William Morris had not only talked but acted.
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM MORRIS]
+
+To any student of social movements to-day, whether he has been drawn into
+the swirl of socialistic propaganda or whether he is still comfortably
+sitting in his parlor feeling an intellectual sympathy but no emotional
+call to leave his parlor and be up and doing, Morris appears as the most
+interesting figure of the century. The pioneers in the nineteenth-century
+movement toward socialism in England, unless we except the social
+enthusiasm of a Shelley or a Blake, were Owen and Maurice. Owen was that
+remarkable anomaly, a self-made man who had gained his wealth because of
+the new industrial order inaugurated by the invention of machinery, who
+yet could look at the circumstances so fortuitous for him in an impersonal
+manner, and realize that what had put a silver spoon into his own mouth
+was taking away even pewter spoons from other men's mouths. Although he
+was really in love with the new order of machine production, he realized
+what many to-day fail to see, that machine production organized for the
+benefit of private persons would most assuredly mean the poverty and the
+degradation of the workers. He did not stop here, however, but spent his
+vast fortune in trying to make the conditions of the workingmen better. In
+the estimation of socialists to-day his work was of a very high order,
+"not mere utopianism." It bore no similarity to the romantic dreams of
+poets who saw visions of a perfect society regardless of the fact that a
+perfect society cannot suddenly blossom from conditions of appalling
+misery and degradation. Owen was a practical business man. He knew all the
+ins and outs of the industrial régime, and consequently he had a practical
+program, not a dream, which he wished to see carried out. Accounts of the
+conditions of the workers at that time are heartrending. Everywhere the
+same tale of abject poverty, ignorance, and oppression in field and
+factory, long hours of labor and dear food. To bring help to these
+downtrodden people was the burning desire of Robert Owen and his
+followers. His efforts were not rewarded by that success which they
+deserved, his failure being a necessary concomitant of the fact that even
+a practical program for betterment cannot suddenly take effect owing to
+the inevitable inertia of any long-established conditions. In showing the
+causes which kept him from the full accomplishment of his ideals, in spite
+of his genuine practicalness, Brougham Villiers, the recent historian of
+the socialist movement in England, says he attempted too much "to
+influence the workers from without, trying, of course vainly, to induce
+the governing classes to interest themselves in the work of social reform.
+Yet it is difficult to see what else he could have done at the time. We
+have already shown how utterly disorganized the working classes were, how
+incapable, indeed, of any organization. They were also destitute of
+political power, and miserably underpaid. What could they do to help
+themselves? Help, if it was to come at all, must come from the only people
+who then had the power, if they only had the will, to accord it, and to
+them, at first, Robert Owen appealed. Later, he turned to the people,
+and for them indeed his work was not utterly wasted, though generations
+were to pass before the full effect of it could be seen."
+
+However abortive his attempts to gain political sympathy for his socialist
+program, and in spite of the fact that socialist agitation came to a
+standstill in England with the defeat of the somewhat chaotic socialism of
+the Chartists, it cannot be doubted that his efforts influenced the
+political reformers who were to take up one injustice after another and
+fight for its melioration until the working classes were at least brought
+to a plane where they could begin to organize and develop toward the still
+higher plane where they could themselves take their own salvation in hand.
+
+Another man who did much to bring the workingman's cause into prominence
+was Maurice, who emphasized the Christian aspect of the movement. He was
+an excellent supplement to Owen, whose liberal views on religion militated
+in some quarters against an acceptance of his humane views in regard to
+workingmen.
+
+Notwithstanding the personal strength of these two men they failed not
+only in the practical attainment of their object, but their ideas on
+socialism did not even wedge itself into the thought consciousness of the
+Englishmen.
+
+The men who did more than any one else to awaken the sleeping English
+consciousness were Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold and Morris. Of these Morris
+held a position midway between the old-fashioned dreamer of dreams and the
+new-fashioned hustling political socialist, who now sends his
+representatives to Parliament and has his "say" in the national affairs of
+the country.
+
+Being a poet, he could, of course, dream dreams, and one of these, "The
+Dream of John Ball," puts the case of the toilers in a form at once so
+convincing and so full of divine pity that it does not seem possible it
+could be read even by the most hardened of trust magnates without making
+him see how unjust has been the distribution of this world's goods through
+the making of one man do the work of many: "In days to come one man shall
+do the work of a hundred men--yea, of a thousand or more: and this is the
+shift of mastership that shall make many masters and many rich men." This
+is a riddle which John Ball cannot grasp at once, and when it is explained
+to him he is still more mystified at the result.
+
+"Thou hast seen the weaver at his loom: think how it should be if he sit
+no longer before the web and cast the shuttle and draw home the sley, but
+if the shed open of itself, speed through it as swift as the eye can
+follow, and the sley come home of itself, and the weaver standing by ...
+looking to half a dozen looms and bidding them what to do. And as with the
+weaver so with the potter, and the smith, and every worker in metals, and
+all other crafts, that it shall be for them looking on and tending, as
+with the man that sitteth in the cart while the horse draws. Yea, at last
+so shall it be even with those who are mere husbandmen; and no longer
+shall the reaper fare afield in the morning with his hook over his
+shoulder, and smite and bind and smite again till the sun is down and the
+moon is up; but he shall draw a thing made by men into the field with one
+or two horses, and shall say the word and the horses shall go up and down,
+and the thing shall reap and gather and bind, and do the work of many men.
+Imagine all this in thy mind if thou canst, at least as ye may imagine a
+tale of enchantment told by a minstrel, and then tell me what shouldst
+thou deem that the life of men would be amidst all this, men such as these
+of the township here, or the men of the Canterbury guilds."
+
+And John Ball's conclusion is that things in that day to come will be not
+as they are but as they ought to be. With irresistible logic he declares:
+
+"I say that if men still abide men as I have known them, and unless these
+folk of England change as the land changeth--and forsooth of the men, for
+good and for evil, I can think no other than I think now, or behold them
+other than I have known them and loved them--I say if the men be still
+men, what will happen except that there should be all plenty in the land,
+and not one poor man therein ... for there would then be such abundance of
+good things, that, as greedy as the lords might be, there would be enough
+to satisfy their greed and yet leave good living for all who labored with
+their hands; so that these should labor for less than now, and they would
+have time to learn knowledge," and he goes on, "take part in the making of
+laws."
+
+But Morris was not the man to dream, merely. Though he did not trouble
+himself about the doctrinaire side of socialism, he preached it constantly
+from the human side and from the artistic side. While some socialist
+writers make us feel that socialism might possibly only be Gradgrind in
+another guise, he makes us feel that peace and plenty and loveliness
+would attend upon the sons and daughters of socialism. As one of his many
+admirers says of him: "He was an out-and-out Communist because of the
+essential sanity of a mind incapable of the desire to monopolize anything
+he could not use."
+
+The authoritarianism of the Marxian socialists was distasteful to him,
+for, to quote from the same admirer, his "conception of socialism was that
+of a free society, based on the simple rights of all to use the earth and
+anything in it, and the consequent abolition of all competition for the
+means of life." His attitude of mind on these points led him to break away
+from the Social Democratic Federation, which, with its political program,
+was distasteful to Morris's more purely social feeling, and found the
+Socialist League. This emphasized more particularly the artistic side of
+socialism. Morris and his followers were bent upon making life a beautiful
+thing as well as a comfortable thing.
+
+According to all accounts, the League was not as great a force in the
+development of socialist ideals as was Morris himself, who inspired such
+men as Burne-Jones and Walter Crane with a sympathy in the new ideals, as
+well as multitudes of lesser men in the crowds that gathered to listen to
+him in Waltham Green or in some other like open place of a Sunday.
+
+Morris's chief contribution to the growth of the cause was perhaps his own
+business plant, into which he put as many of his ideals for the betterment
+of the workingmen's conditions as he was able to do under existing
+conditions. Who has not gloated over his exquisite editions of Chaucer and
+the like--books in which even the punctuation marks are a delight to the
+eye, and the illustrations as far beyond ordinary illustrations as the
+punctuation marks are beyond ordinary periods. If anything could add to
+the richness of the interior it is the contrasting simplicity of the white
+vellum bindings, and, again, if there is another possible touch of
+grace--a gilding of the lily--what could better fulfil that purpose than
+the outer boxing covered with a Morris cotton print! The critical may
+object that these Morris editions are so expensive that none but
+millionaire bibliophiles can have many of them. How many of us have even
+seen them except in such collections! And how many of his workmen are able
+to share in this product of their labor to any greater extent than the
+product of labor is usually shared in by its producers, may be asked.
+
+Though we are obliged to answer that the workmen probably do not have the
+Morris books in their own libraries, they yet have the joy of making these
+beautiful books under conditions of happy workmanship--that is, they are
+skilled craftsmen, who have been trained in an apprenticeship, who are
+asked to work only eight hours a day, who receive higher wages than other
+workmen and, above all, who have the stimulation of the presence of
+Morris, himself, working among them.
+
+Morris's enthusiasm for a more universally happy and beautiful society
+combined with the object lesson of his own methods in conducting a
+business upon genuinely artistic principles has done an incalculable
+amount in spreading the gospel of socialism. Still there was too much of
+the _laissez faire_ atmosphere about his attitude for it to bring about
+any marked degree of progress.
+
+The opinion of Mr. William Clarke who had many conversations with Morris
+on the subject reveals that, after all, there was too much of the poet
+about him for him to be a really practical force in the movement. He
+writes:
+
+"It is not easy to understand how Morris proposes to bring about the
+condition of things he looks forward to. No parliamentary or municipal
+methods, no reliance upon lawmaking machinery, an abhorrence of everything
+that smacks of 'politics': it all seems very impracticable to the average
+man, and certainly suggests the poet rather than the man of affairs. What
+Morris thinks will really happen is, I should say, judging from numerous
+conversations I have had with him, something like this: Existing society
+is, he thinks, gradually, but with increasing momentum, disintegrating
+through its own rottenness. The capitalist system of production is
+breaking down fast and is compelled to exploit new regions in Africa and
+other parts, where he thinks its term will be short. Economically,
+socially, morally, politically, religiously, civilization is becoming
+bankrupt. Meanwhile it is for the socialist to take advantage of this
+disintegration by spreading discontent, by preaching economic truths, and
+by any kind of demonstration which may harass the authorities and develop
+among the people an _esprit de corps_. By these means the people will, in
+some way or other, be ready to take up the industry of the world when the
+capitalist class is no longer able to direct or control it. Morris
+believes less in a violent revolution than he did and thinks that
+workmen's associations and labor unions form a kind of means between
+brute force on the one hand and a parliamentary policy on the other. He
+does not, however, share the sanguine views of John Burns as to the
+wonders to be accomplished by the 'new' trades unionism."
+
+The practical ineffectiveness of the Morris socialism in spite of its
+having taken some steps in the direction of vital activity was overcome by
+the next socialist body which came into prominence--the Fabian Society, in
+which Bernard Shaw has been so conspicuous a figure.
+
+As already mentioned, the Fabians are not a fighting body, but a solidly
+educational body. To them is due the bringing of socialism into the realm
+of political economy, and in so doing they have striven to harmonize it
+with English practical political methods. Besides this, they have done a
+vast amount of work in educating public opinion, not with the view to
+immediately converting the English nation to a belief in the changing of
+the present order into one wholly socialistic, but with a view to
+introducing socialistic treatment of the individual problems which arise
+in contemporary politics.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN BURNS]
+
+Their campaign of education was conducted so well that its effects were
+soon visible, not only in the modification of public opinion, but upon
+the workingmen themselves. The method was simple enough: "If any public,
+especially any social, question came to the front, the Fabian method was
+to make a careful independent study of the matter, and present to the
+public, in a penny pamphlet, a thoughtful statement of the case and some
+common sense, and incidentally socialistic, suggestions for a solution."
+Fabian ideas were thus introduced into the consciousness of the awakening
+trades unionists.
+
+It has been objected that the gain was much more for the trades unionists
+than for the Fabians. Their one-time eager pupils have, it is said,
+progressed beyond their masters, as a review of recent socialistic
+tendencies would divulge had we the time to follow them in this place.
+However that may be, the great fact remains that the Fabians have done
+more than any other branch of socialists to bridge over the distance
+between what the English writers call the middle-class idealist and the
+proletarian, with the result that the proletarian has begun to think for
+himself and to translate middle-class idealism into proletarian realism.
+
+Socialism, from being the watch word of the enthusiastic revolutionary,
+began to be discussed in every intelligent household and in every
+debating society. This enormous growth in public sentiment occurred during
+the session of the Unionist Parliament, 1886-92. When this Parliament
+opened there was hardly any socialist literature, and when it closed
+everybody was reading Bellamy and the "Fabian Essays," and Sir William
+Harcourt had made his memorable remark: "We are all socialists now."
+
+The gesticulating and bemoaning idealists, the Carlyles and the Ruskins,
+the revolutionary but _laissez faire_ prophets like Morris, who believed
+in a complete change but not in using any of the means at hand to bring
+about that change, had given place to men like Keir Hardie and John Burns,
+who had sprung into leadership from the ranks of the workingmen
+themselves, and who were to be later their representatives in Parliament
+when the Independent Labor Party came into existence. All this had been
+done by that group of progressive men, long-headed enough to see that the
+ideal of a better and more beautiful social life could not be gained
+except by a long and toilsome process of education and of action which
+would consciously follow the principles of growth discovered by scientists
+to obtain in all unconscious cosmic and physical development, the very
+principle which as we have seen, Browning declared should have guided his
+hero Sordello long before the Fabian socialists came into
+existence--namely, the principle of evolution. That their methods should
+have peacefully brought about the conditions where it was possible to form
+an Independent Labor Party, which would have the power to speak and act
+for itself instead of working as the Fabians themselves do through the
+parties already in power, shouts aloud for the wisdom of their policy. And
+is there not still plenty of work for them to do in the still further
+educating of all parties toward the flowering of genuine democracy, when
+the dreams of the dreamer shall have become actualities, because true and
+not spurious ways of making them actual shall have been worked out by
+experience?
+
+This remarkable growth in social ideals was taking place during the ninth
+decade of the century and the last decade of Browning's life. Is there any
+indication in his later work that he was conscious of it? There is
+certainly no direct evidence in his work that he progressed any farther in
+the development of democratic ideals than we find in the liberalism of
+such a parliamentary leader as Mr. Gladstone, while in that poem in which
+he considers more especially than in any other the subject of better
+conditions for the people, "Sordello," he distinctly expresses a mood of
+doubt as to the advisability of making conditions too easy for the human
+being, who needs the hardships and ills of life to bring his soul to
+perfection, a far more important thing in Browning's eyes than to live
+comfortably and beautifully. All he wishes for the human being is the fine
+chance to make the most of himself spiritually. The socialist would say
+that he could not secure the chance to do this except in a society where
+the murderous principle of competition should give way to that of
+coöperation. With this Browning might agree. Indeed, may this not have
+been the very principle Sordello had in mind as something revealed to him
+which neither Guelf nor Ghibelline could see, or was this only the more
+obvious principle of republican as opposed to monarchical principle and
+still falling under an individualistic conception of society?
+
+While his work is instinct with sympathy for all classes and conditions of
+men, Browning does not feel the ills of life with the intensity of a
+Carlyle, nor its ugliness with the grief of a Ruskin, nor yet its lack of
+culture with the priggishness of an Arnold, nor would he stand in open
+spaces and preach discontent to the masses like Morris. Why? Because he
+from the first was made wise to see a good in evil, a hope in ill-success,
+to be proud of men's fallacies, their half reasons, their faint aspirings,
+upward tending all though weak, the lesson learned after weary experiences
+of life by Paracelsus. His thought was centered upon the worth of every
+human being to himself and for God. Earth is after all only a place to
+grow in and prepare one's self for lives to come, and failure here, so
+long as the fight has been bravely fought, is to be regarded with anything
+but regret, for it is through the failure that the vision of the future is
+made more sure.
+
+What he finds true, as we saw, in the religious or philosophical world, he
+finds true in the moral world. Lack in human knowledge points the way to
+God; lack in human success points the way to immortality.
+
+The meaning of this life in relation to a future life being so much more
+important than this life in itself, and man's individual development being
+so much more important than his social development, Browning naturally
+would not turn his attention upon those practical, social or governmental
+means by which even the chance for individual development must be
+secured. He is too much occupied with the larger questions. He is not even
+a middle-class idealist, dreaming dreams of future earthly bliss; he is
+the prophet of future existences.
+
+Does his practical influence upon the social development of the century
+amount to nothing then? Not at all. He started out on his voyage through
+the century toward the democratic ideal in the good ship
+Individualism--the banner ship indeed. What he has emphasized upon this
+voyage is first the paramount worth of each and every human being, whether
+good or bad. Second, the possibility in every human being of conceiving an
+ideal, toward which by the exertion of his will power he should aspire,
+battling steadfastly against every obstruction that life throws in his
+course. Third, that even those who are incapable of formulating an ideal
+must be regarded as living out the truth of their natures and must
+therefore be treated with compassion. Fourth, that the highest function of
+the human soul is love, which expresses itself in many ways, but attains
+its full flowering only in the love of man and woman on a plane of
+spiritual exaltation, and that through this power of human love some
+glimpse of the divine is caught; therefore to this function of the soul
+it is of the utmost importance that human beings should be loyal and true,
+even if that loyalty and truth conflict with conventional ways of looking
+at life. Sailing in this good ship he also expresses his sympathy
+indirectly in his dramas and directly upon several occasions with the
+ideals of political freedom which during the century have been making
+progress toward democracy in the English Parliament through the
+legislation of the liberals, whose laws have brought a greater and greater
+measure of freedom to the middle classes and some measure of freedom to
+the working classes.
+
+But it seems as if when nearing the end of the century Browning landed
+from his ship upon some high island and straining his eyes toward the
+horizon of the dawn of another life did not fully realize that there was
+another good ship, Socialism, struggling to reach the ideal of democracy,
+and now become the banner ship whose work is to sail out into the unknown,
+turbulent seas of the future, finding the path to another high island in
+order that the way may be made clear for the ship Individualism to
+continue her course to another stage in the voyage toward a perfect
+democracy. And as the new ship, Socialism, passes on its way it will do
+well to heed the vision of the poet seer, straining his eyes toward the
+dawn of other lives in other spheres, lest in the struggle and strain to
+bring about a more comfortable and beautiful life upon earth, the
+important truth be slighted that humanity has a higher destiny to fulfil
+than can be realized in the most Utopian dreams of an earthly democracy.
+This truth is in fact not only forgotten but is absolutely denied by many
+of the latter-day social reformers.
+
+To sum up, I think one is justified in concluding that as a sympathizer
+with the liberal political tendencies of the nineteenth century Browning
+is of his age. In his quiescence upon the proletarian movement of the
+latter part of the nineteenth century he seems to have been left behind by
+his age. In his insistence upon the worth of the individual to himself and
+to God he is both of his age and beyond it. As has been said of
+philosophy, "It cannot give us bread but it can give us God, soul and
+immortality," so we may say of Browning, that though he did not raise up
+his voice in the cry of the proletarian for bread, he has insisted upon
+the truths of God, the soul and immortality.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+ART SHIBBOLETHS
+
+
+In the foregoing chapters the relations of the poet to the philosophical,
+religious, political, and social movements of the nineteenth century have
+been pointed out. In this and the next chapter some account of his
+relation to the artistic and literary ideals of the century will be
+attempted.
+
+Browning's relation to the art of the century is, of course, twofold,
+dealing as it must with his own conceptions and criticisms of art as well
+as with the position of his own art in the poetic development of the
+century.
+
+In order to understand more fully his own contribution to the developing
+literary standards of the century it may be well first to consider the
+fundamental principles of art laid down by him in various poems wherein he
+has deliberately dealt with the subject.
+
+The poem in which he has most clearly formulated the general principles
+underlying the growth of art is the "Parleying" with Charles Avison.
+Though music is the special art under consideration, the rules of growth
+obtaining in that are equally applicable to other arts. They are found to
+be, as we should expect in Browning, a combination of the ideas of
+evolution and conservation. Though the standards of art change and
+develop, because as man's soul evolves, more complex forms are needed to
+express his deeper experiences, his wider vision, yet in each stage of the
+development there is an element of permanent beauty which by the aid of
+the historical sense man may continue to enjoy. That element of permanence
+exists when genuine feeling and aspiration find expression in forms of
+art. The element of change grows out of the fact that both the thought
+expressed and the form in which it is expressed are partial manifestations
+of the beauty or truth toward which feeling aspires; hence the need of
+fresh attempts to reach the infinite. The permanence of feeling,
+expressing itself in ever new forms, is brought out finely in this
+passage:
+
+                                          "Truths escape
+  Time's insufficient garniture: they fade,
+  They fall--those sheathings now grown sere, whose aid
+  Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine
+    And free through march frost: May dews crystalline
+    Nourish truth merely,--does June boast the fruit
+  As--not new vesture merely but, to boot,
+  Novel creation? Soon shall fade and fall
+  Myth after myth--the husk-like lies I call
+  New truth's Corolla-safeguard."
+
+In another passage is shown how the permanence of feeling conserves even
+the form, if we will bring ourselves into touch with it:
+
+                                "Never dream
+  That what once lived shall ever die! They seem
+  Dead--do they? lapsed things lost in limbo? Bring
+  Our life to kindle theirs, and straight each king
+  Starts, you shall see, stands up."
+
+This kindling of an old form with our own life is more difficult in the
+case of music than it is in painting or poetry, for in these we have a
+concrete form to deal with--a form which reflects the thought with much
+more definiteness than music is able to do. The strength and weakness, at
+once, of music is that it gives expression to subtler regions of thought
+and feeling than the other arts, at the same time that the form is more
+evanescent, because fashioned out of elements infinitely less related to
+nature than those of other art forms. In his poems on music, the poet
+always emphasizes these aspects of music. Its supremacy as a means of
+giving expression to the subtlest regions of feeling is dwelt upon in
+"Abt Vogler" and "Fifine at the Fair." The Abbé, from the standpoint of
+the creator of music, feels so strongly from the inside its power for
+expressing infinite aspiration that in his ecstasy he exclaims: "The rest
+may reason and welcome. 'Tis we musicians know." Upon the evanescence of
+the form peculiar emphasis is also laid in this poem, through the fact
+that the music is improvised. Yet even this fact does not mean the entire
+annihilation of the form. In the tenth stanza of the poem the idea of the
+permanence of the art form as well as of the feeling is expanded into a
+symbol of the immortality of all good:
+
+  "All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;
+    Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
+  Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
+    When eternity confirms the conception of an hour,
+  The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
+    The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
+  Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
+    Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by."
+
+The sophistical arguer in "Fifine" feels this same power of music to
+express thoughts not to be made palpable in any other manner.
+
+                        "Words struggle with the weight
+  So feebly of the False, thick element between
+  Our soul, the True, and Truth! which, but that intervene
+  False shows of things, were reached as easily by thought
+  Reducible to word, and now by yearnings wrought
+  Up with thy fine free force, oh Music, that canst thrill,
+  Electrically win a passage through the lid
+  Of earthly sepulchre, our words may push against,
+  Hardly transpierce as thou."
+
+And again, in another passage, he gives to music the power of conserving a
+mood of feeling, which in this case is not an exalted one, since it is one
+that chimes in with his own rather questionable feeling for Fifine, the
+fiz-gig. It is found in Schumann's "Carnival":
+
+  "Thought hankers after speech, while no speech may evince
+  Feeling like music,--mine, o'er-burthened with each gift
+  From every visitant, at last resolved to shift
+  Its burthen to the back of some musician dead
+  And gone, who feeling once what I feel now, instead
+  Of words, sought sounds, and saved forever, in the same,
+  Truth that escapes prose,--nay, puts poetry to shame.
+  I read the note, I strike the Key, I bid _record_
+  The instrument--thanks greet the veritable word!
+  And not in vain I urge: 'O dead and gone away,
+  Assist who struggles yet, thy strength becomes my stay,
+  Thy record serve as well to register--I felt
+  And knew thus much of truth! With me, must knowledge melt
+  Into surmise and doubt and disbelief unless
+  Thy music reassure--I gave no idle guess,
+  But gained a certitude I yet may hardly keep!
+  What care? since round is piled a monumental heap
+  Of music that conserves the assurance, thou as well
+  Was certain of the same! thou, master of the spell,
+  Mad'st moonbeams marble, didst _record_ what other men
+  Feel only to forget!'"
+
+The man in the case is merely an appreciator, not a creator, yet he
+experiences with equal force music's power as a recorder of feeling. He
+notes also that the feeling must appear from time to time in a new dress,
+
+                              "the stuff that's made
+  To furnish man with thought and feeling is purveyed
+  Substantially the same from age to age, with change
+  Of the outside only for successive feasters."
+
+In this case, the old tunes have actually been worked over by the more
+modern composer whose form has not yet sufficiently gone by to fail of an
+immediate appeal to this person with feelings kindled by similar
+experiences. What the speaker in the poem perceives is not merely the fact
+of the feelings experienced but the power of the music to take him off
+upon a long train of more or less philosophical reasoning born of that
+very element of change. In this power of suggestiveness lies music's
+greater range of spiritual force even when the feeling expressed is not of
+the deepest.
+
+If we look at his poems on painting, the same principles of art are
+insisted upon except that more emphasis is laid upon the positive value of
+the incompleteness of the form. In so far as painting or sculpture reaches
+a perfect unity of thought and form it loses its power of suggesting an
+infinite beauty beyond any that our earth-born race may express.
+
+This in Browning's opinion is the limitation of Greek art. It touches
+perfection or completion in expression and in so doing limits its range to
+the brief passion of a day. The effect of such art is to arouse a sort of
+despair, for it so far transcends merely human beauty that there seems
+nothing left to accomplish:
+
+  "So, testing your weakness by their strength,
+    Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty
+  Measured by Art in your breadth and length,
+    You learned--to submit is a mortal's duty."
+
+When such a deadlock as this is reached through the stultifying effect of
+an art expression which seems to have embodied all there is of passion and
+physical beauty, the one way out is to turn away from the abject
+contemplation of such art and go back again to humanity itself, in whose
+widening nature may be discovered the promise of an eternity of
+progression. Therefore, "To cries of Greek art and what more wish you?"
+the poet would have it that the early painters replied:
+
+          "To become now self-acquainters,
+    And paint man, whatever the issue!
+  Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray,
+    New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters:
+  To bring the invisible full into play!
+    Let the visible go to the dogs--what matters?"
+
+The revolution in art started by these early worthies had more of
+spiritual promise in it than the past perfection--"The first of the new,
+in our race's story, beats the last of the old."
+
+His emphasis here upon the return to humanity in order to gain a new
+source of inspiration in art is further illustrated in his attitude toward
+the two painters which he portrays so splendidly: Fra Lippo Lippi, the
+realist, whose Madonnas looked like real women, and who has scandalized
+some critics on this account, and Andrea del Sarto, the faultless painter,
+who exclaims in despair as he gazes upon a picture by Raphael, in which he
+sees a fault to pardon in the drawing's line, an error that he could alter
+for the better, "But all the play, the insight and the stretch," beyond
+him.
+
+The importance of basing art upon the study of the human body is later
+insisted upon in Francis Furini, not as an end in itself, but as the
+dwelling place of the soul. "Let my pictures prove I know," says Furini,
+
+  "Somewhat of what this fleshly frame of ours
+  Or is or should be, how the soul empowers
+  The body to reveal its every mood
+  Of love and hate, pour forth its plenitude
+  Of passion."
+
+The evolutionary ideal appears again in his utterances upon poetry, though
+when speaking of poetry it is the value of the subject matter and its
+intimate relation to the form upon which he dwells.
+
+The little poem "Popularity" shows as clearly as any the importance which
+he attaches to a new departure in poetic expression, besides giving vent
+to his scorn of the multitude which sees nothing in the work of the
+innovator but which is ready at a later date to laud his imitators. Any
+minor poet, for that matter, any Nokes or Stokes who merely prints blue
+according to the poetic conventions of the past, possessing not a
+suspicion of the true inspiration which goes to the making of a poet of
+the new order, is more acceptable to an unseeing public than him with
+power to fish "the murex up" that contains the precious drop of royal
+blue.
+
+More than one significant hint may be gleaned from his verse in regard to
+his opinion upon the formal side of the poet's art. In "Transcendentalism"
+he has his fling at the didactic poet who pleases to speak naked thoughts
+instead of draping them in sights and sounds, for "song" is the art of the
+poet. Some stout mage like him of Halberstadt has his admiration, who with
+a
+
+                "'Look you!' vents a brace of rhymes,
+  And in there breaks the sudden rose herself,
+  Over us, under, round us every side,
+  Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs
+  And musty volumes, Boehme's book and all,--
+  Buries us with a glory young once more,
+  Pouring heaven into this shut house of life."
+
+He was equally averse to an ornate classical embellishment of a latter day
+subject or to a looking at nature through mythopoeic Greek eyes. This is
+driven home in the splendid fooling in "Gerard de Lairesse" where the poet
+himself indulges by way of a joke in some high-flown classical imagery in
+derision of the style of Lairesse and hints covertly probably at the
+nineteenth-century masters of classical resuscitation, in subject matter
+and allusion, Swinburne and Morris. Reacting to soberer mood, he
+reiterates his belief in the utter deadness of Greek ideals of art,
+speaking with a strength of conviction so profound as to make one feel
+that here at least Browning suffered from a decided limitation, all the
+more strange, too, when one considers his own masterly treatment of Greek
+subjects. To the poets whose poetic creed is
+
+              "Dream afresh old godlike shapes,
+  Recapture ancient fable that escapes,
+  Push back reality, repeople earth
+  With vanished falseness, recognize no worth
+  In fact new-born unless 'tis rendered back
+  Pallid by fancy, as the western rack
+  Of fading cloud bequeaths the lake some gleam
+  Of its gone glory!"
+
+he would reply,
+
+                          "Let things be--not seem,
+  I counsel rather,--do, and nowise dream!
+  Earth's young significance is all to learn;
+  The dead Greek lore lies buried in the urn
+  Where who seeks fire finds ashes. Ghost, forsooth!
+  What was the best Greece babbled of as truth?
+  A shade, a wretched nothing,--sad, thin, drear,
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                    Sad school
+  Was Hades! Gladly,--might the dead but slink
+  To life back,--to the dregs once more would drink
+  Each interloper, drain the humblest cup
+  Fate mixes for humanity."
+
+The rush onward to the supreme is uppermost in the poet's mind in this
+poem. Though he does indulge in the refrain that there shall never be one
+lost good echoing the thought in "Charles Avison," the climax of his mood
+is in the contemplation of the evolutionary force of the soul which must
+leave Greek art behind and find new avenues of beauty:
+
+                                  "The Past indeed
+  Is past, gives way before Life's best and last
+  The all-including Future! What were life
+  Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife
+  Through the ambiguous Present to the goal
+  Of some all-reconciling Future? Soul,
+  Nothing has been which shall not bettered be
+  Hereafter,--leave the root, by law's decree
+  Whence springs the ultimate and perfect tree!
+  Busy thee with unearthing root? Nay, climb--
+  Quit trunk, branch, leaf and flower--reach, rest sublime
+  Where fruitage ripens in the blaze of day."
+
+When it comes to the subject matter of poetry, Browning constantly insists
+that it should be the study of the human soul. A definite statement as to
+the range of subjects under this general material of poetry is put forth
+very early in his poetical career in "Paracelsus" and it is all-inclusive.
+It is the passage where Aprile describes how universal he wished to make
+his sympathy as a poet. No one is to be left out of his all-embracing
+democracy.
+
+Such, then, are his general principles in regard to poetic development and
+subject matter. These do not touch upon the question so often discussed of
+the relative value of the subjective as against the objective poet. This
+point the poet considers in "Sordello," where he throws in his weight on
+the side of the objective poet. In the passage in the third book the poet,
+speaking in person, gives illustrations of three sorts of poetic
+composition: the dramatic, the descriptive and the meditative; the first
+belongs to the objective, the second, not distinctively to either, and the
+third to the subjective manner of writing. The dramatic method is the most
+forceful, for it imparts the gift of seeing to others, while the
+descriptive and meditative merely tell what they saw, or, worse still,
+talk about it.
+
+Further indications of his allegiance to the dramatic form of poetry as
+the supreme one are found in his poems inspired by Shakespeare, "House"
+and "Shop," but we must turn to a pregnant bit of his prose in order to
+find his exact feeling upon the relations of the subjective and objective
+poet, together with a clear conception of what he meant by a dramatic
+poet, which was something more than Shakespeare's "holding the mirror up
+to nature." In his view the dramatic poet must have the vision of the seer
+as well as the penetration of a psychologist. He must hold the mirror up
+not only to nature, regarded as phenomena, but to the human soul, and he
+must perceive the relation of that human soul to the universal. He must in
+fact plunge beneath the surface of actions and events and bring forth to
+the light the psychic and cosmic causes of these things. The passage
+referred to in the "Introduction to the Shelley Letters" points out how in
+the evolution of poetry there will be the play and interplay of the
+subjective and the objective faculties upon each other, with the probable
+result of the arising of poets who will combine the two sorts of faculty.
+While Browning's own sympathy with the dramatic poet is as fully evident
+here as in the passage in "Sordello," he realizes, as perhaps he did not
+at that time, when he was himself breaking away from Shelley's influence,
+the value of the subjective method in carrying on the process of poetic
+evolution:
+
+    "It would be idle to inquire, of these two kinds of poetic faculty in
+    operation, which is the higher or even rarer endowment. If the
+    subjective might seem to be the ultimate requirement of every age,
+    the objective, in the strictest state, must still retain its original
+    value. For it is with this word, as starting-point and basis alike,
+    that we shall always have to concern ourselves: the world is not to be
+    learned and thrown aside, but reverted to and relearned. The spiritual
+    comprehension may be infinitely subtilized, but the raw material it
+    operates upon must remain. There may be no end of the poets who
+    communicate to us what they see in an object with reference to their
+    own individuality; what it was before they saw it, in reference to the
+    aggregate human mind, will be as desirable to know as ever. Nor is
+    there any reason why these two modes of poetic faculty may not issue
+    hereafter from the same poet in successive perfect works, examples of
+    which, according to what are now considered the exigencies of art, we
+    have hitherto possessed in distinct individuals only. A mere running
+    in of the one faculty upon the other is, of course, the ordinary
+    circumstance. Far more rarely it happens that either is found so
+    decidedly prominent and superior as to be pronounced comparatively
+    pure: while of the perfect shield, with the gold and the silver side
+    set up for all comers to challenge, there has yet been no instance. A
+    tribe of successors (Homerides), working more or less in the same
+    spirit, dwell on his discoveries and reinforce his doctrine; till, at
+    unawares, the world is found to be subsisting wholly on the shadow of
+    a reality, on sentiments diluted from passions, on the tradition of a
+    fact, the convention of a moral, the straw of last year's harvest.
+    Then is the imperative call for the appearance of another sort of
+    poet, who shall at once replace this intellectual rumination of food
+    swallowed long ago, by a supply of the fresh and living swathe;
+    getting at new substance by breaking up the assumed wholes into parts
+    of independent and unclassed value, careless of the unknown laws for
+    recombining them (it will be the business of yet another poet to
+    suggest those hereafter), prodigal of objects for men's outer and not
+    inner sight; shaping for their uses a new and different creation from
+    the last, which it displaces by the right of life over death,--to
+    endure until, in the inevitable process, its very sufficiency to
+    itself shall require, at length, an exposition of its affinity to
+    something higher--when the positive yet conflicting facts shall again
+    precipitate themselves under a harmonizing law, and one more degree
+    will be apparent for a poet to climb in that mighty ladder, of which,
+    however cloud-involved and undefined may glimmer the topmost step, the
+    world dares no longer doubt that its gradations ascend."
+
+If we measure Browning's own work by the poetic standards which he has
+himself set up in the course of that work, it is quite evident that he has
+on the whole lived up to them. He has shown himself to be an illustration
+of the evolutionary principles in which he believes by breaking away from
+all previous standards of taste in poetry. The history of poetry in
+England has shown this to be a distinctive characteristic of all the
+greatest English poets. From Shakespeare down they have one and all run
+afoul of the critics whose special province seems to be to set up literary
+shibboleths which every genius is bent upon disregarding. When Spenser was
+inventing his stanza, verse critics were abject in their worship of
+hexameters, and their hatred of bald rhymes. Though these sticklers for
+classical forms could see clearly enough that Spenser was possessed of
+genius, they yet lamented the blindness of one, who might have written
+hexameters, perversely exclaiming "Why a God's name may not we as else the
+Greeks have the kingdom of our own language, and measure our accents by
+the sound, reserving quantity to the verse?" When Milton appears and finds
+blank verse the medium best suited to his subject, he comes up against the
+rhyming standards of his day and is forced to submit to the indignity of
+having his "Paradise Lost" "tagged with rhymes," as he expresses it, by
+Dryden, who graciously devoted his powers of rhyme to an improved version
+of the poem. Milton was actually obliged to defend himself in his preface
+to "Paradise Lost" for using blank verse, as Browning defends himself in
+the Epilogue to "Pacchiarotto and How We Worked in Distemper" for writing
+"strong" verse instead of the "sweet" verse the critics demand of him.
+
+By the time the nineteenth century dawns the critics are safely intrenched
+in the editorial den, from which, shielded by any sort of shibboleth they
+can get hold of, they may hurl forth their projectiles upon the
+unoffending head of the genius, who, with no chance of firing back in the
+open arena of the magazine, must either suffer in silence or take refuge
+in sarcastic slurs upon his critics in his poetry, for here lies the only
+chance of getting even without waiting for the whirligig of time to bring
+the public round to a recognition of the fact that he is the one who has
+in very truth, "fished the murex up."
+
+The caliber of man who could speak of "The Ode to Immortality" as "a most
+illegible and unintelligible poem," or who wonders that any man in his
+senses could put his name to such a rhapsody as "Endymion," or who
+dismissed "Prometheus Unbound" with the remark that it was a _mélange_ of
+nonsense, cockneyism, poverty and pedantry, would hardly be expected to
+welcome "Sordello" with effusion. Even very intelligent people cracked
+unseemly jokes upon the appearance of "Sordello," and what wonder, for
+Browning's British instinct for freedom carried him in this poem to the
+most extreme lengths. In "Pauline" he had allied himself with things
+familiar to the English reader of poetry. Many of the allusions are
+classical and introduced with a rich musicalness that Shelley himself
+might have envied. The reminiscences of Shelley would also come within the
+intellectual acreage of most of the cultured people of the time. And even
+in "Paracelsus," despite the unfamiliarity of the subject, there was
+music and imagery such as to link the art with the admired poetic art of
+the day, but in "Sordello" all bounds are broken.
+
+No one but a delver in the byways of literature could, at that time, have
+been expected to know anything about Sordello; no one but a historian
+could have been expected to know about the complicated struggles of the
+Guelfs and the Ghibellines; no one but a philosopher about the tendencies,
+both political and literary, manifesting themselves in the direction of
+the awakening of democratic ideals in these pre-Dantean days; no one but a
+psychologist about the tortuous windings of Sordello's mind.
+
+Only by special searching into all these regions of knowledge can one
+to-day gain a complete grasp of the situation. He must patiently tread all
+the paths that Browning trod before he can enter into sympathy with the
+poet. Then he will crack no more jokes, but he will marvel at the mind
+which could wield all this knowledge with such consummate familiarity; he
+will grow ecstatic over the splendors of the poem, and will regret its
+redundancy not of diction so much but of detail and its amazing lack of
+organic unity.
+
+No one but a fanatic could claim that "Sordello" is a success as an
+organic work of art. While the poet had a mastery of knowledge, thought
+and feeling, he did not have sufficient mastery of his own form to weld
+these together into a harmonious and convincing whole, such mastery as he,
+for example, shows in "The Ring and the Book," though even in that there
+is some survival of the old redundancy.
+
+One feels when considering "Sordello" as a whole as if gazing upon a
+picture in which the perspective and the high lights and the shadows are
+not well related to each other. As great an abundance of detail is
+expended upon the less important as upon the more important fact, and
+while the details may be interesting enough in themselves, they dislodge
+more important affairs from the center of consciousness. It is, not to be
+too flippant, something like Alice's game of croquet in "Through the
+Looking Glass." When the hedgehog ball is nicely rolled up ready to be
+struck, the flamingo mallet walks off somewhere else.
+
+There, then, in "Sordello" is perhaps the most remarkable departure from
+the accepted in poetic art that an Englishman has ever attempted. In its
+elements of failure, however, it gave "a triumph's evidence," to use the
+poet's own phrase, "of the fulness of the days." In this poem he had
+thrown down the gauntlet. His subject matter was not to be like that of
+any other poet, nor was his form to be like that of any other poet. He
+discarded the flowing music of "Pauline" and of "Paracelsus." His
+allusions were no longer to be classic, but to be directly related to
+whatever subject he had in hand; his style was also to be forth-right and
+related to his subject, strong, idiomatic, rugged, even jolting if need
+be, or noble, sweeping along in large rhythms or couched in rare forms of
+symbolism, but, whatever it was to be, always different from what had
+been.
+
+All he required at the time when "Sordello" appeared was to find that form
+in which he could so unify his powers that his poems would gain the
+organic completeness necessary to a work of art. No matter what new
+regions an artist may push into he must discover the law of being of this
+new region. Unless he does, his art will not convince, but the moment he
+does, all that was not convincing falls into its right place. He becomes
+the master of his art, and relates the new elements in such a way that
+their rightness and their beauty, if not immediately recognized, are sure
+sooner or later to be recognized by the evolving appreciator, who is the
+necessary complement, by the way, of the evolving artist. Before
+"Sordello" Browning had tried three other forms; the subjective narrative
+in "Pauline," the dramatic poem in "Paracelsus," a regular drama in
+"Strafford," which however runs partly parallel with "Sordello" in
+composition. He had also done two or three short dramatic monologues.
+
+He evidently hoped that the regular drama would prove to be the form most
+congenial to him, for he kept on persistently in that form for nearly ten
+years, wrote much magnificent poetry in it and at times attained a
+grandeur of dramatic utterance hardly surpassed except in the master of
+all dramatists, Shakespeare. But while he has attained a very genuine
+success in this form, it is not the success of the popular acting drama.
+His dramas are to-day probably being left farther and farther aside every
+moment in the present exaggerated demands for characters in action, or
+perhaps it might be nearer the truth to say clothes horses in action.
+Besides, the drama of action in character, which is the type of drama
+introduced into English literature by Browning, has reached a more perfect
+development in other hands. Ibsen's dramas are preëminently dramas of
+action in character, but the action moves with such rapidity that the
+audience is almost cheated into thinking they are the old thing over
+again--that is, dramas of characters in action.
+
+Browning's characters in his dramas are presented with a completeness of
+psychological analysis which makes them of paramount interest to those few
+who can and like to listen to people holding forth to any length on the
+stage, and with superb actors, who can give every subtlest change of mood,
+a Browning drama furnishes an opportunity for the utmost intensity of
+pleasure. Still, one cannot help but feel that the impressionistic
+psychology of Ibsen reaches a pinnacle of dramatic art not attained by
+Browning in his plays, delightful in character portrayal as they are, and
+not upon any account to have been missed from dramatic literature.
+
+In the dramatic monologue Browning found just that form which would focus
+his forces, bringing them into the sort of relationship needed to reveal
+the true law of being for his new region of poetic art.
+
+If we inquire just why this form was the true medium for the most perfect
+expression of his genius, I think we may answer that in it, as he has
+developed it, is given an opportunity for the legitimate exercise of his
+mental subtlety. Through the voice of one speaker he can portray not only
+the speaker but one or more other characters, and at the same time show
+the scene setting, and all without any direct description. On the other
+hand, his tendency to redundancy, so marked when he is making a character
+reveal only his own personality, is held in check by the necessity of
+using just those words and turns of expression and dwelling upon just
+those details which will make each character stand out distinctly, and at
+the same time bring the scene before the reader.
+
+The people in his dramatic monologues live before us by means of a
+psychology as impressionistic as that of Ibsen's in his plays. The effect
+is the same as that in a really great impressionistic painting. Nature is
+revealed far more distinctly--the thing of lights and shadows, space and
+movement--than in pictures bent upon endless details of form. "My Last
+Duchess" is one among many fine examples of his method in monologue. In
+that short poem we are made to see what manner of man is the duke, what
+manner of woman the duchess. We see what has been the duke's past, what is
+to be his future, also the present scene, as the duke stands in the hall
+of his palace talking to an ambassador from the count who has come to
+arrange a marriage with the duke for the count's daughter. Besides all
+this a glimpse of the ambassador's attitude of mind is given. This is done
+by an absolutely telling choice of words and by an organic relationing of
+the different elements. The law of his genius asserts itself.
+
+Browning's own ideal of the poet who makes others see was not completely
+realized until he had perfected a form which would lend itself most
+perfectly to the manner of thing which he desired to make others
+see--namely, the human soul in all its possible manifestations of feeling
+and mood, good, bad, and indifferent, from the uninspired organist who
+struggles with a mountainous fugue to the inspired improvisor whose soul
+ascends to God on the wings of his music, from the unknown sensitive
+painter who cannot bear to have his pictures the subject of criticism or
+commerce to the jolly life-loving Fra Lippo, from the jealous, vindictive
+woman of "The Laboratory" to the vision-seeing Pompilia, from Ned Bratts
+to Bishop Blougram, and so on--so many and wonderful that custom cannot
+state their infinite variety.
+
+Consistent, so far, with his own theories we find the work of Browning to
+be. He also follows his ideal in the discarding of classical allusion
+and illustration. Part of his dictum that the form should express the
+thought is shown in his habitual fitting of his allusions to the subject
+he is treating. By this means he produces his atmosphere and brings the
+scene clearly before us; witness his constant references to Molinos and
+his influence in "The Ring and the Book," an influence which was making
+itself felt in all classes of society at the time when the actual tragedy
+portrayed in the poem occurred. This habit, of course, brings into his
+poetry a far wider range of allusions unfamiliar to his contemporaries
+than is to be found in other Victorian poets, and makes it necessary that
+these should be "looked up" before an adequate enjoyment of their fitness
+is possible. Hence the Browning societies, so often held up to ridicule by
+the critics, who blindly prefer to show their superior attitude of mind in
+regard to everything they do not know, and growl about his obscurity, to
+welcoming any movement which means an increase of general culture. The
+Browning societies have not only done much to make Browning's unusual
+allusions common matters of knowledge, but they have helped to keep alive
+a taste for all poetry in an age when poetry has needed all the friendly
+support it could get.
+
+All great poets lead the ordinary mind to unfamiliar regions of knowledge
+and thereby to fresh planes of enjoyment. That Browning has outdone all
+other poets in this particular should be to his honor, not to his
+dispraise.
+
+In one very marked direction, however, he is not a perfect exemplar of his
+own theories--that is, he is not always consistently dramatic. He belongs
+to that order of poets described by himself in the Shelley Introduction as
+neither completely subjective nor completely objective, but with the two
+faculties at times running in upon each other. He is often absolutely
+objective in his expression of a mood or a feeling, but the moment the
+mood takes upon it the tinge of thought we begin to feel Browning himself.
+
+The fundamental principles upon which he bases his own solution of the
+problems of existence are seen to crop out, colored, it is true, by the
+personality of the speaker, but yet traceable to their source in the
+mental make up of Browning himself. It may well be that Browning has come
+so near to the ultimate truth discoverable by man in his fundamental
+principles that they are actually universal truths, to be found lying deep
+down at the roots of all more partial expressions, just as gravitation,
+conservation of energy, evolution underlie every phenomena of nature,
+and therefore when a Pope in "The Ring and the Book," a Prince
+Hohenstiel-Swangau, a Bishop Blougram, a Cleon or a John in "The Death in
+the Desert," give utterance to their views upon life, they are bound to
+touch from one or another angle the basic principles of life common to all
+humanity as well as to the poet--the center within us all where "truth
+abides in fulness."
+
+This would seem an even more complete fusing of the two faculties in one
+poet than that spoken of by Browning, where a poet would issue successive
+works, in some of them the one faculty and in some of them the other
+faculty being supreme.
+
+That Browning was, to a certain extent, a poet of this third order of
+which he prophesied is true, for he has written a number of poems like "La
+Saisiaz," "Reverie," various of his prologues and epilogues which are
+purely subjective in content. There are also subjective passages in the
+midst of other poems, like those in "Sordello," "Prince Hohenstiel," the
+"Parleyings," etc. If we place such a poem as "Reverie" side by side with
+"Fra Lippo Lippi" we see well-nigh perfect illustrations of the two
+faculties as they existed in the one poet, Browning. On the other hand,
+in those poems where the thought, as I have said, suggests Browning, in
+the speech of his characters he has something of the quality of what
+Browning calls the subjective poet of modern classification. "Gifted like
+the objective poet, with the fuller perception of nature and man, he is
+impelled to embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to
+the many below as to the One above him, the supreme intelligence which
+apprehends all things in their absolute truth, an ultimate view ever
+aspired to, if but partially attained, by the poet's soul."
+
+Browning may be said to have carried to its flood tide the "Liberal
+Movement in English Literature," as Courthope calls it, inaugurated at the
+dawn of the century by the Lake School, which reacted against the correct
+school of Dryden and Pope. Along with the earlier poets of the century he
+shared lack of appreciation at the hands of critics in general. The
+critics had been bred in the school of the eighteenth century, and
+naturally would be incapable of understanding a man whose thought was
+permeated with the doctrines of evolution, then an unknown quantity except
+to the elect in scientific circles, and not to become the possession of
+the thinking world at large until beyond the middle of the century;
+whose soul was full of the ardor of democracy, shown not only in his
+choice and treatment of subjects, but in his reckless independence of all
+the shibboleths of the past; and whose liberalness in the treatment of
+moral and religious problems was such as to scandalize many in an age when
+the law forbade that a man should marry his deceased wife's sister, and
+when the Higher Criticism of the Bible had not yet migrated to England
+from Germany; and, finally, whose style was everything that was atrocious
+because entirely different from anything they had seen before.
+
+The century had to grow up to him. It is needless to say that it did so.
+Just as out of the turmoil of conflicting scientific and religious thought
+has emerged a serene belief in man's spiritual destiny, so out of the
+turmoil of conflicting schools of criticism has arisen a perception of the
+value of the new, the original, the different in art. Critics begin to
+apply the principles of evolution to their criticism as Browning applied
+it to his art, with the result that they no longer measure by past
+standards of art but by relating the art to the life of the time in its
+various manifestations, not forgetting that the poet or the dramatist may
+have a further vision of what is to come than any other man of his age.
+
+The people first, for the most part, found out that here in Browning's
+work was a new force, and calmly formed themselves into groups to study
+what manner of force it might be, regardless of the sneers of newspaperdom
+and conventional academies. And gradually to the few appreciative critics
+of the early days have been added one authoritative voice after another
+until the chorus of praise has become a large one, and Browning, though
+later than any great poet of the century, is coming into his own.
+
+In a certain chart of English literature with which I am acquainted,
+wherein the poets are graphically represented in mountain ranges with
+peaks of various heights, Tennyson is shown as the towering peak of the
+Victorian Era, while Browning is a sturdy but much lower peak with a
+blunted top. This is quite symbolic of the general attitude toward
+Browning at the end of the century, for, with all the appreciation, there
+has been on the part of authority a disinclination to assign to him the
+chief place among the poets of the Victorian Era. Courthope, who most of
+the time preserves a remarkable reticence upon Browning, voices this
+general attitude in a remark ventured upon in one of his lectures in
+1900. He says:
+
+"No one who is capable of appreciating genius will refuse to admire the
+powers of this poet, the extent of his sympathy and interest in external
+things, the boldness of his invention, the energy of his analysis, the
+audacity of his experiments. But so absolutely does he exclude all
+consideration for the reader from his choice of subject, so arbitrarily,
+in his treatment of his themes, does he compel his audience to place
+themselves at his own point of view, that the life of his art depends
+entirely upon his own individuality. Should future generations be less
+inclined than our own to surrender their imagination to his guidance, he
+will not be able to appeal to them through that element of life which lies
+in the Universal."
+
+To the present writer this seems simply like a confession on Courthope's
+part that he was unable to perceive in Browning the elements of the
+Universal which are most assuredly there, and which were fully recognized
+by a Scotch writer, Dawson, at the same time that Courthope was
+questioning his power to hold coming generations.
+
+"The fashions of the world may change," writes Dawson, "and the old doubts
+may wear themselves out and sink like shadows out of sight in the
+morning of a stronger faith; but even so the world will still turn to the
+finer poems of Browning for intellectual stimulus, for the purification of
+pity and of pathos, for the exaltation of hope.
+
+"Or if the darkness still thickens, all the more will men turn to this
+strong man of the race, who has wrestled and prevailed; who has illumined
+with imaginative insight the deepest problems of the ages; who has made
+his poetry not merely the vehicle of pathos, passion, tenderness, fancy,
+and imagination, but also of the most robust and masculine thought. He has
+written lyrics which must charm all who love, epics which must move all
+who act, songs which must cheer all who suffer, poems which must fascinate
+all who think; and when 'Time hath sundered shell from pearl,' however
+stern may be the scrutiny, it may be said that there will remain enough of
+Robert Browning to give him rank among the greatest of poets, and secure
+for him the sure reward of fame."
+
+But it is to France we must go for the surest authoritative note--that
+land of the Academy and correct taste which _hums_ and _hahs_ over its own
+Immortals in proverbially unpenetrating conclave. No less a man than
+Taine declares that Browning stands first among English poets--"the most
+excellent where excellence is greatness, the most gifted where genius is a
+common dower."
+
+While there can be no doubt that Browning outdid all the other great poets
+of his time in "azure feats," in developing an absolutely self-centered
+ideal of art, which is yet so true to the ultimate tendencies of the
+century, indeed to those of all time, for evolution and democracy are
+henceforth the torch-bearers of the human soul--each of the other
+half-dozen or so greatest poets had distinct and independent
+individualities which were more nearly the outcome of the current
+tendencies of the time than Browning's.
+
+[Illustration: ALFRED TENNYSON]
+
+Tennyson was equally familiar with the thought and much more familiar with
+the politics of the day, but there is an infinite difference in their
+attitude. Browning, if I may be excused for quoting one of Shakespeare's
+most abused phrases, rides over the century like a "naked new-born babe
+striding the blast." Tennyson ambles through it on a palfrey which has a
+tendency to flounder into every slough of despond it comes to. This may
+seem to be putting it rather too strongly, but is it not true? Browning
+has the vision belonging to the latest child of time. He never follows; he
+leads. With his eyes fixed upon a far-off future where man shall be _man_
+at last, he faces every problem with the intrepidity of an Oedipus
+confronting the Sphynx. The mystery of its riddles has no terrors for him.
+It is given to him as to few others to see the ineffable beauty of life's
+mystery, the promise it holds out of eternal joy. While he frequently
+discourses upon the existence of evil, he never for a moment admits any
+doubt into his own utmost soul of the beneficent part evil is meant to
+play in the molding of human destinies. Mr. Santayana has called him a
+barbarous poet. In a certain sense he is, if to be born among the first on
+a new plane of psychic perception where of no account become the endless
+metaphysical meanderings of the intellect, which cry "proof, proof, where
+there can be no proof," is barbarous. It was doubtless largely owing to
+this power of vision reminding us again somewhat of the child's in
+Maeterlinck's "Les Aveugles" which kept Browning from tinkering in the
+half-measures of the political leaders of his time. His plane is not
+unlike that of his own Lazarus, about whom the Arab physician says:
+
+  "The man is witless of the size, the sum,
+  The value in proportion of all things,
+  Or whether it be little or be much.
+  Discourse to him of prodigious armament
+  Assembled to besiege his city now,
+  And of the passing of a mule with gourds--
+  'Tis one! Then take it on the other side,
+  Speak of some trifling fact,--he will gaze rapt
+  With stupor at its very littleness,
+  (For as I see) as if in that indeed
+  He caught prodigious import, whole results;
+  And so will turn to us the bystanders
+  In ever the same stupor (note this point)
+  That we, too, see not with his opened eyes."
+
+The import of an event is everything. Large imports may lurk more surely
+in the awakening of some obscure soul than in the pageantry of law
+bringing a tardy and wholly inadequate measure of justice to humanity.
+Though Tennyson talks of the "far-off divine event" he has no burning
+conviction of it and does not ride toward it with triumph in his eye and
+flaming joy in his soul. As he ambles along, steeping himself in the
+science of the time, its revelations make him nervous; he falls into doubt
+from which he can only extricate himself by holding on to belief, a very
+different thing from Browning's vision.
+
+Thus it happens that Tennyson voices the feelings of an immense class of
+cultured people, who have gone through the century in the same ambling
+fashion, a prey to its fears, intellectual enough to see the truths of
+science, but not spiritual enough to see the import of the dawn of the new
+day.
+
+Tennyson, then, quite of and in his time, would desire above all things to
+appeal to it as it appealed to him. He waxes enthusiastic over
+conventional politics, he treats his social problems so entirely in
+accordance with the conventions of the day that they are not problems at
+all, and he is quite in love with the beauty of aristocratic society,
+though he occasionally descends to the people for a subject. These are all
+entirely sufficient reasons for his popularity as a poet during his life,
+further emphasized by the added fact that having no subject matter (that
+is thought-content) wherewith to startle the world by strangeness, he took
+the wiser part of delighting them with his exquisite music.
+
+Though so satisfactory a representative of his times, he did outrage one
+of the shibboleths of the critics in his efforts to find a new and richer
+music than poets had before used by bringing scientific imagery into his
+verse. Of all the absurd controversies indulged in by critics, the most
+absurd is that fought out around the contention that science and poetry
+cannot be made to harmonize. Wordsworth was keen enough to see this before
+the rest of the world and prophesied in the preface to his "Lyrical
+Ballads" that science would one day become the closest of allies to
+poetry, and Tennyson was brilliant enough to seize the new possibilities
+in scientific language with a realization that nature imagery might almost
+be made over by the use in describing it of scientific epithets. A famous
+illustration of the happy effects he produced by these means is in the
+lines "Move eastward happy Earth and round again to-night." His
+observation of Nature, moreover, had a scientific accuracy, which made
+possible far more delicate and individual descriptions of Nature's aspects
+than had been produced before. It was also a happy thought for him to
+weave so much of his poetry around the Arthurian legends. Beautiful in
+themselves, they came nearer home than classical or Italian legends, and,
+when made symbolic of an ideal which must appeal to the heart of every
+cultured Englishman, who regarded himself as a sort of prototype of the
+blameless King Arthur, and whose grief at the failure of the social fabric
+planned by him would be as poignant as that of the King himself, they
+carried with them a romantic and irresistible attraction.
+
+The reasons why Tennyson should appeal especially to the nineteenth
+century cultured and highly respectable Englishman far outweighed any
+criticisms that might be made by critics on his departure from poetic
+customs of the past. He pleased the highest powers in the land, became
+Laureate and later Lord Tennyson. He will therefore always remain the poet
+most thoroughly representative of that especial sort of beauty belonging
+to a social order which has reached a climax of refinement and
+intelligence, but which, through its very self-satisfaction, cuts itself
+off from a perception of the true value of the new forces coming into play
+in the on-rushing stream of social development.
+
+The other poets who divide with Browning and Tennyson the highest honors
+of the Victorian Era are Landor, Arnold, Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, Mrs.
+Browning, George Meredith.
+
+Landor and Arnold preserved more than any of the others a genuine
+classical aroma in their verse, and on this account have always been
+delighted in by a few. After all, the people may not immediately accept a
+poet of too great independence, but they are least of all likely to grow
+enthusiastic over anything reactionary either in style or thought.
+Romantic elements of not too startling a character win the favor of most
+readers.
+
+Though classic in style both these poets reflected phases of the century's
+thought. Landor differed from Browning in the fact that he frequently
+expressed himself vigorously upon the subject of current politics. His
+political principles were not of the most advanced type, however. He
+believed in the notion of a free society, but seems to have thought the
+best way of attaining it would be a commonwealth in which the wise should
+rule, and see that the interests of all should be secured. Still his
+insistence upon liberty, however old-fashioned his ideas of the means by
+which it should be maintained, puts him in the line of the democratic
+march of the century.
+
+Swinburne calls him his master, and represents himself in verse as having
+learned many wise and gracious things of him, but his thought was not
+sufficiently progressive to triumph over the classicism of his style in an
+age of romantic poetry, though there will always be those who hold on to
+the shibboleth that, after all, the classic is the real thing in poetry,
+never realizing that where the romantic is old enough, it, too, becomes
+classic.
+
+Matthew Arnold stands in poetry where men like Huxley and Clifford stood
+in science, who, Childe-Roland like, came to the dark tower, calmly put
+the slug horn to their lips and blew a blast of courage. Science had
+undermined their belief in a future life as well as destroying the
+revealed basis of moral action. In such a man the intellectual nature
+overbalances the intuitional, and when inherited belief based on authority
+is destroyed, there is nothing but the habit of morality left.
+
+Arnold has had the sympathy of those who could no longer believe in their
+revealed religion, but who loved it and regretted its passing away from
+them. He gives expression to this feeling in lines like these:
+
+                      "The sea of faith
+  Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
+  Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
+  But now I only hear
+  Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
+  Retreating, to the breath
+  Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
+  And naked shingles of the world."
+
+The regret for something beautiful that is gone is capable of exquisite
+poetic treatment, but it is not an abiding note of the century. It
+represents only one phase of its thought, and that a transcient one,
+because it could be felt with poignancy only by those whose lives were
+rudely shaken by the destruction of the ideal in which they had been bred
+and in which they devoutly believed. Arnold's sympathetic treatment of
+this phase of doubt seems, however, to have been of incalculable service
+to those who felt as he did. It softened the anguish of the shock to have
+not only the beauty of the past dwelt upon, but to have the beauty of
+courage in the face of a destroyed ideal erected into a new ideal for
+living brave and noble lives. In "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse" is a
+fine example of the beauty which may be imparted to a mood as melancholy
+as could well be imagined:
+
+  "Not as their friend, or child, I speak!
+    But as, on some far northern strand,
+  Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek
+    In pity and mournful awe might stand
+  Before some fallen Runic stone--
+  For both were faiths, and both are gone.
+
+  "Wandering between two worlds, one dead
+    The other powerless to be born,
+  With nowhere yet to rest my head,
+    Like these, on earth I wait forlorn,
+  Their faith, my tears, the world deride--
+  I come to shed them at their side."
+
+Such hope as he has to offer comes out in stanzas like the following,
+but all is dependent upon strenuous living:
+
+  "No, no! the energy of life may be
+  Kept on after the grave, but not begun;
+  And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife,
+  From strength to strength advancing--only he,
+  His soul well-knit, and all his battle won,
+  Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life."
+
+Nor shall better days on earth come without struggle since life
+
+  "Is on all sides o'ershadowed by the high
+  Uno'erleaped Mountains of Necessity,
+  Sparing us narrower margin than we deem.
+  Nor will that day dawn at a human nod,
+  When, bursting through the network, superposed
+  By selfish occupation--plot and plan,
+  Lust, avarice, envy-liberated man,
+  All difference with his fellow-mortal closed,
+  Shall be left standing face to face with God."
+
+Though Arnold was sternly criticised he had before the end of the century
+been accorded his proper place as a poet, which was that of the chief poet
+between the greatest lights of the century, Browning and Tennyson and the
+pre-Raphaelite group. Gosse, with more penetration than can always be
+accorded to him, declares that "His devotion to beauty, the composure,
+simplicity and dignity of his temper, and his deep moral sincerity gave
+to his poetry a singular charm which may prove as durable as any element
+in modern verse."
+
+The phase of romanticism carried to its climax by the pre-Raphaelite poets
+Rossetti and his sister, Morris and Swinburne had, like the work of
+Tennyson, its full recognition, in its own time, because these poets, like
+him, have put into exquisite music romantic subjects derived both from the
+classics and from mediæval legend. The new note of sensuousness, due
+largely to the Italian influence of Rossetti, with his sensuous
+temperament, his intensity of passion and his love of art, and also in
+Morris and Swinburne to their pagan feeling, one of the elements
+inaugurated by the general breaking down of orthodox religious ideals
+through the encroachments of science, does not seem to have affected their
+popularity.
+
+As there were those who would sympathize with the Tennysonian attitude
+toward doubt, and those who would sympathize with Matthew Arnold's, there
+were others to feel like Swinburne, pantheistic, and, like Morris, utterly
+hopeless of a future, while others again might criticise the pagan
+feeling, but, with their inheritance of beauty from Tennyson and his
+predecessors of the dawn of the century, would delight in these new
+developments of the romantic spirit.
+
+[Illustration: A. C. SWINBURNE]
+
+Ruskin is said to have been the original inspirer of these four poets,
+though Fitz-Gerald's "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyám was not without its
+influence. But as Edmund Gosse says, "The attraction of the French
+romances of chivalry for William Morris, of Tuscan painting for D. G.
+Rossetti, of the spirit of English Gothic architecture for Christina
+Rossetti, of the combination of all these with Greek and Elizabethan
+elements for Swinburne, were to be traced back to start--words given by
+the prophetic author of the 'Seven Lamps of Architecture.'"
+
+Though the first books of this group of poets, the "Defence of Guenevere"
+(1858), "Goblin Market," "Early Italian Poets," "Queen Mother and
+Rosamond" (1861), did not make any impression on the public, with the
+publication of Swinburne's "Atalanta in Calydon" an interest was awakened
+which reached a climax with the publication of Rossetti's poems in 1870.
+Rossetti had thrown these poems into his wife's grave, as the world knows,
+but was prevailed upon to have them recovered and published.
+
+In the success of this group was vindicated at last the principles of the
+naturalists of the dawn of the century. Here was a mixture of color, of
+melody, of mysticism, of sensuousness, of elaboration of form which
+carried originality and independence as far as it could well go in a
+direction which painted life primarily from the outside. But when this
+brilliant culminating flash of the early school of Coleridge and Keats
+began to burn itself out, there was Tennyson, who might be called the
+conservative wing of the romantic movement, dominant as ever, and
+Browning, the militant wing, advanced from his mid-century obscurity into
+a flood-tide of appreciation which was to bear him far onward toward
+literary pre-eminence, placing him among the few greatest names in
+literature.
+
+The originality of the pre-Raphaelites grew out of their welding of
+romantic, classical, and mediæval elements, tempered in each case by the
+special mental attitude of the poet.
+
+Rossetti and his brother artists, Millais and Holman Hunt, who founded the
+pre-Raphaelite brotherhood of painters, pledged themselves to the
+fundamental principle laid down by Rossetti in the little magazine they
+started called the _Germ_. This new creed was simple enough and ran: "The
+endeavor held in view throughout the writings on art will be to
+encourage and enforce an entire adherence to the simplicity of Nature."
+
+In their interpretation and development of this simple principle, artists
+and the poets who joined them differentiated from one another often to a
+wide extent. In Rossetti, it becomes an adoration of the beauty of woman
+expressed in ultra-sensuous though not in sensual imagery, combined with
+an atmosphere of religious wonder such as one finds in mediæval poets, of
+which "The Blessed Damozel" stands as a typical example. In it, as one
+appreciator has said, all the qualities of Rossetti's poetry are found.
+"He speaks alternately like a seer and an artist; one who is now bewitched
+with the vision of beauty, and now is caught up into Paradise, where he
+hears unutterable things. To him the spiritual world is an intense
+reality. He hears the voices, he sees the presences of the supernatural.
+As he mourns beside the river of his sorrow, like Ezekiel, he has his
+visions of winged and wheeling glory, and leaning over the ramparts of the
+world his gaze is fixed on the uncovered mysteries of a world to come.
+There is no poet to whom the supernatural has been so much alive.
+Religious doubt he seems never to have felt. But the temper of religious
+wonder, the old, childlike, monkish attitude of awe and faith in the
+presence of the unseen, is never absent in him. The artistic force of his
+temperament drives him to the worship of beauty; the poetic and religious
+forces to the adoration of mystery."
+
+To Swinburne the simplicity of nature included the utmost lengths to which
+eroticism could go. Upon this ground he has been severely censured and he
+has had an unfortunate influence upon scores and scores of younger writers
+who have seemed to think that the province of the poet is to decry the
+existence of sincere affection, and who in their turn have exercised
+actual mischief in lowering social standards.
+
+This is not all of Swinburne, however. His superb metrical power is his
+chief contribution to the originality of this group, and when he developed
+away from his nauseating eroticism, he could charm as no one else with his
+delicious music, though it often be conspicuous for its lack of richness
+in thought.
+
+His fate has been somewhat different from that of most poets. When his
+"Atalanta in Calydon" was published it was received with enthusiasm, but
+the volumes overweighted with eroticism which followed caused a fierce
+controversy, and many have not even yet discovered that this was only one
+phase of Swinburne's art, and that, unfortunate as it is in many
+respects, it was a phase of the century's life which must find its
+expression in art if that life is to be completely given, and that it was
+a passing phase Swinburne himself proved in the development of other
+phases shown in his interest in current political situations, his
+enthusiasm for Italy and his later expressions of high moral ideals, as
+well as in a quasi-religious attitude of mind, not so far from that of
+Emerson, himself, in which strong emphasis is placed upon the importance
+of the individual, and upon the unity of God and man.
+
+There is moral courage and optimism in the face of doubt of a high order
+in the following lines:
+
+  --"Are ye not weary and faint not by the way
+  Seeing night by night devoured of day by day,
+    Seeing hour by hour consumed in sleepless fire?
+      Sleepless; and ye too, when shall ye, too sleep?
+  --We are weary in heart and head, in hands and feet,
+  And surely more than all things sleep were sweet,
+    Than all things save the inexorable desire
+      Which whoso knoweth shall neither faint nor weep.
+
+  "Is this so sweet that one were fain to follow?
+  Is this so sure when all men's hopes are hollow,
+     Even this your dream, that by much tribulation
+      Ye shall make whole flawed hearts, and bowed necks straight?
+  --Nay though our life were blind, our death were fruitless,
+  Not therefore were the whole world's high hope rootless;
+    But man to man, nation would turn to nation,
+      And the old life live, and the old great word be great."
+
+But Swinburne in his farthest reaches of pantheistic aspiration is to be
+seen in a poem like "Hertha":
+
+              "I am that which began;
+                Out of me the years roll;
+              Out of me God and man;
+                I am equal and whole;
+  God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul.
+
+              "The tree many-rooted
+                That swells to the sky
+              With frondage red-fruited
+                The life-tree am I;
+  In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves; ye shall live and not
+      die.
+
+              "But the Gods of your fashion
+                That take and that give,
+              In their pity and passion
+                That scourge and forgive,
+  They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they shall die
+      and not live.
+
+              "My own blood is what stanches
+                The wounds in my bark:
+              Stars caught in my branches
+                Make day of the dark,
+  And are worshipped as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their fires
+      as a spark."
+
+Morris's interpretation of pre-Raphaelite tenets took him into mediæval
+legend and the classics for his subject matter. In his first volume, "The
+Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems," he came into competition with
+Tennyson, who was at the same time issuing his Arthurian legends. The
+polish of Tennyson's verse, as well as its symbolical meaning for the
+time, was more acceptable than the actual return to the nature of the
+fifteenth century, and this the first volume from a pre-Raphaelite was
+hardly noticed by the critics. Morris sulked within his literary tents for
+ten years before he again appeared, this time with "The Life and Death of
+Jason" (1867), which immediately became popular. Later came the "Earthly
+Paradise." These tales, in verse noble and simple, in style recalling the
+tales of Chaucer, yet with a charm all their own, in which the real men
+and women of Chaucer give place to types, have been the delight of those
+who like to find in poetry a dreamland of romance where they may enjoy
+themselves far from the problems and toils of everyday life. He differs
+from all the other poets of this group in his lack of religious hope. His
+mind was of the type that could not stand up against the undermining
+influences of the age: hence world-weariness and despair are the
+constantly recurring notes.
+
+[Illustration: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI]
+
+Mrs. Browning far outdistanced her husband in the early days in
+popularity. She pleased the people by her social enthusiasm, a
+characteristic more marked in her verse than in that of any of the poets
+mentioned. The critics have found many faults in her style, mainly those
+growing out of an impassioned nature which carried her at times beyond the
+realm of perfectly balanced art. But even an English critic of the
+conservatism of Edmund Gosse could at last admit that "In some of her
+lyrics and more rarely in her sonnets she rose to heights of passionate
+humanity which place her only just below the great poets of her country."
+
+Contemporary criticism of "Aurora Leigh," which was certainly a departure
+both in form and matter from the accepted standards, was, on the whole,
+just. _The Quarterly Review_ in 1862 said of it: "This 'Aurora Leigh' is a
+great poem. It is a wonder of art. It will live. No large audience will it
+have, but it will have audience; and that is more than most poems have. To
+those who know what poetry is and in what struggles it is born--how the
+great thoughts justify themselves--this work will be looked upon as one of
+the wonders of the age." Mrs. Browning resembles her husband in the fact
+that she does not fit into the main line of evolution of the romantic
+school, but is an individual manifestation of the romantic spirit, showing
+almost as great freedom from the trammels of accepted romanticism as
+Browning does.
+
+The writer of the century whose experience as a novelist almost paralleled
+that of Browning as poet was Meredith. Because of his psychological
+analysis and the so-called obscurity of his style, he waited many years
+for recognition and finally was accepted as one of the most remarkable
+novelists of the age. His poetry, showing similar tendencies, and
+overshadowed by his novels, has not yet emerged into the light of
+universal appreciation. One finds it even ignored altogether in the most
+recent books of English literature, yet he is the author of one of the
+most remarkable series of sonnets in the English language, "Modern Love,"
+presenting, as it does, a vivid picture of domestic decadence which forms
+a strange contrast to Rossetti's sonnets, "The House of Life," indicating
+how many and various have been the forces at work during the nineteenth
+century in the disintegrating and molding of social ideals. Meredith
+writes of "Hiding the Skeleton".
+
+  "At dinner she is hostess, I am host.
+  Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps
+  The topic over intellectual deeps
+  In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost.
+  With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball:
+  It is in truth a most contagious game;
+  _Hiding the Skeleton_ shall be its name.
+  Such play as this the devils might appall,
+  But here's the greater wonder; in that we,
+  Enamor'd of our acting and our wits,
+  Admire each other like true hypocrites.
+  Warm-lighted glances, Love's Ephemeral,
+  Shoot gayly o'er the dishes and the wine.
+  We waken envy of our happy lot.
+  Fast sweet, and golden, shows our marriage-knot.
+  Dear guests, you now have seen Love's corpse-light shine!"
+
+Rossetti writes "Lovesight":
+
+  "When do I see thee most, beloved one?
+    When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
+    Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
+  The worship of that Love through thee made known?
+  Or when, in the dusk hours (we two alone),
+    Close-kiss'd and eloquent of still replies
+    Thy twilight--hidden glimmering visage lies,
+  And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
+    O love, my love! if I no more should see
+    Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
+  Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,--
+    How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope,
+    The ground-whirl of the perish'd leaves of Hope,
+  The wind of Death's imperishable wing?"
+
+Browning's criticism of painting was evidently much influenced by the
+pre-Raphaelites. Their admiration for the painters who preceded Raphael,
+revealing as it did to them an art not satisfied with itself, but reaching
+after higher things, and earnestly seeking to interpret nature and human
+life, is echoed in his "Old Pictures in Florence," which was written but
+six years after Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti formed their brotherhood. In
+poetry, they did not eschew classical subjects, as Browning did for the
+most part, but they treated these subjects in a romantic spirit, and so
+removed them from the sort of strictures that Browning made upon the
+perfection of Greek art.
+
+From this summary of the chief lines of literary development in the
+nineteenth century it will be seen, not only what a marvelous age it has
+been for the flowering of individualism in literary invention, but how
+Browning has surpassed all the other poets of note in the wideness of his
+departure from accepted standards, and how helpless the earlier critics
+were in the face of this departure, because of their dependence always
+upon critical shibboleths--in other words, of principles not sufficiently
+universal--as their means of measuring a poet's greatness. Tennyson and
+the pre-Raphaelites won their popularity sooner among critics because
+they followed logically in the line of development inaugurated by the
+earlier poets, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, etc., whose poetry had already
+done some good work in breaking down the school of Dryden and Pope, though
+it succeeded only in erecting another standard not sufficiently universal
+to include Browning. The evolution of art forms, a principle so clearly
+understood, as we have shown by Browning, has never become a guiding one
+with critics, though Mr. Gosse in his "Modern English Literature" has
+expressed a wish that the principle of evolution might be adapted to
+criticism. He has evidently felt how hopeless is the task of appraising
+poets by the old individualistic method, which, as he says, has been in
+favor for at least a century. It possesses, he declares, considerable
+effectiveness in adroit hands, but is, after all, an adaptation of the old
+theory of the unalterable type, merely substituting for the one authority
+of the ancients an equal rigidity in a multitude of isolated modern
+instances. For this inflexible style of criticism he proposes that a
+scientific theory shall be adopted which shall enable us at once to take
+an intelligent pleasure in Pope and in Wordsworth, in Spenser and in
+Swift. He writes:
+
+"Herbert Spencer has, with infinite courage, opened the entire world of
+phenomena to the principles of evolution, but we seem slow to admit them
+into the little province of æsthetics. We cling to the individualist
+manner, to that intense eulogy which concentrates its rays on the
+particular object of notice and relegates all others to proportional
+obscurity. There are critics of considerable acumen and energy who seem to
+know no other mode of nourishing a talent or a taste than that which is
+pursued by the cultivators of gigantic gooseberries. They do their best to
+nip off all other buds, that the juices of the tree of fame may be
+concentrated on their favorite fruit. Such a plan may be convenient for
+the purposes of malevolence, and in earlier times our general ignorance of
+the principles of growth might well excuse it. But it is surely time that
+we should recognize only two criteria of literary judgment. The first is
+primitive, and merely clears the ground of rubbish; it is, Does the work
+before us, or the author, perform what he sets out to perform with a
+distinguished skill in the direction in which his powers are exercised? If
+not, he interests the higher criticism not at all; but if yes, then
+follows the second test: Where, in the vast and ever-shifting scheme of
+literary evolution, does he take his place, and in what relation does he
+stand, not to those who are least like him, but to those who are of his
+own kith and kin?"
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE MEREDITH]
+
+With such principles of criticism as this, the public would sooner be
+brought to an appreciation of all that is best worth while in literature,
+instead of being taken, as it too often is, upon a wrong scent to worship
+at the shrine of the Nokes and Stokes, who simply print blue and eat the
+turtles.
+
+If Mr. Gosse had himself been fully imbued with such principles would he
+have made the statement quoted in chapter two in regard to Browning's
+later books? And should we have such senseless criticism as a remark which
+has become popular lately, and which I believe emanated from a university
+in the South--namely, that Browning never said anything that Tennyson had
+not said better? As an illustration of this a recent critic may be quoted
+who is entirely scornful of the person who prefers Browning's
+
+  "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world"
+
+to Tennyson's
+
+  "And hear at times a sentinel
+    Who moves about from place to place,
+    And whispers to the worlds of space
+  In the deep night that all is well."
+
+One might reply to this that it is a matter of taste had not Courthope
+shown conclusively that Matthew Arnold's criterion of criticism--namely,
+that a taste which is born of culture is the only certain possession by
+which the critic can measure the beauty of a poet's line--is a fallacy.
+His argument is worth quoting:
+
+    "You have stated strongly one side of the truth, but you have ignored,
+    completely ignored, the other. You have asserted the claims of
+    individual liberty, and up to a certain point I agree with you. I do
+    not deny that spiritual liberty is founded on consciousness, and hence
+    the self-consciousness of the age is part of the problem we are
+    considering. I do not deny that the prevailing rage for novelty must
+    also be taken into account. Liberty, variety, novelty, are all
+    necessary to the development of Art. Without novelty there can be no
+    invention, without variety there can be no character, without liberty
+    there can be no life. Life, character, invention, these are of the
+    essence of Poetry. But while you have defended with energy the freedom
+    of the Individual, you have said nothing of the authority of society.
+    And yet the conviction of the existence of this authority is a belief
+    perhaps even more firmly founded in the human mind than the sentiment
+    as to the rights of individual liberty....
+
+    The great majority of the professors of poetry, however various their
+    opinions, however opposite their tastes, have felt sure that there was
+    in taste, as in science, a theory of false and true; in art, as in
+    conduct, a rule of right and wrong. And even among those who have
+    asserted most strongly the inward and relative nature of poetry, do
+    you think there was one so completely a skeptic as to imagine that he
+    was the sole proprietor of the perception he sought to embody in
+    words; one who doubted his power, by means of accepted symbols, to
+    communicate to his audience his own ideas and feelings about external
+    things? Yet until some man shall have been found bold enough to defend
+    a thesis so preposterous, we must continue to believe that there is a
+    positive standard, by which those at least who speak a common language
+    may reason about questions of taste."
+
+Armed with this gracious permission on the part of a professor of poetry,
+we may venture to reason a little upon the foregoing quotations from
+Tennyson and Browning to the effect that the person of really good taste
+might like each of them in its place. While Tennyson's mystical quatrain
+is beautiful and quite appropriate in such a poem as "In Memoriam," it
+would not be in the least appropriate from the lips of a little
+silk-winding girl as she wanders through the streets of Asolo on a sunny
+morning singing her little songs. She is certainly a more lifelike child
+speaking Browningese, as she has often been criticised for doing, than she
+would be if upon this occasion she spoke in a Tennysonian manner. That her
+song has touched the hearts of the twentieth century, if it was not
+altogether appreciated in the nineteenth, is proved by the fact that it is
+one of the most popular songs of the day as set by Mrs. H. H. A. Beach,
+and that the line is heard upon the lips of people to-day who do not even
+know whose it is, and herein lies the ultimate test of greatness.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+CLASSIC SURVIVALS
+
+
+Before passing in review Browning's treatment of classical subjects as
+compared with the other great poets of the nineteenth century, it will be
+interesting to take a glimpse at his choice of subject-matter in general.
+
+To compare Browning's choice of subject-matter with that of other English
+poets is to strike at the very root of his position in the chain of
+literary development. Subject-matter is by no means simple in its nature,
+but as a musical sound is composed of vibrations within vibrations, so it
+is made up of the complex relations of body and spirit--the mere external
+facts of the story are blended with such philosophical undercurrent, or
+dramatic _motif_, or unfolding of the hidden springs of action as the poet
+is able to insinuate into it.
+
+However far back one penetrates in the history of poetry, poets will be
+found depending largely upon previous sources, rather than upon their own
+creative genius, for the body of their subject-matter, until the
+question presents itself with considerable force as to who could have been
+the mysterious first poet who supplied plots to the rest of mankind.
+Conjecture is obliged to play a part here, as it does wherever human
+origins are in question. Doubtless, this first poet was no separate
+individual, but simply the elements man and nature, through whose action
+and reaction upon each other grew up story-forms, evidently compounded of
+human customs, and observed natural phenomena such as those we find in the
+great Hindu, Greek, and Teutonic classics, and which thus crystallized
+became great well-springs of inspiration for future generations of poets.
+
+Each new poet, however, who is worthy of the name, sets up his own
+particular interplay with man and nature; and however much he may be
+indebted for his inspiration to past products of this universal law of
+action and reaction, he is bound to use them or interpret them in a manner
+colored by his own personal and peculiar relations with the universe.
+
+In so doing he supplies the more important spiritual side of
+subject-matter and becomes in very truth the poet or maker, to that extent
+at least which Browning himself lays down as the province of art--namely,
+to arrange,
+
+  "Dissociate, redistribute, interchange
+  Part with part: lengthen, broaden
+  ... simply what lay loose
+  At first lies firmly after, what design
+  Was faintly traced in hesitating line
+  Once on a time grows firmly resolute
+  Henceforth and evermore."
+
+Sometimes the poet's power of arranging and redistributing and
+interchanging carries him upward into the realm of ideas alone, among
+which his imagination plays in absolute freedom; he throws over the
+results of man's past dallyings with Nature and makes his own terms with
+her, and the result is an approach to absolute creation.
+
+Except in the case of lyric poetry the instances where there have been no
+suggestions as to subject-matter are rare in comparison with those where
+the subject-matter has been derived from some source.
+
+Look, for instance, at the father of English poetry, Chaucer, how he
+ransacked French, Italian and Latin literature for his subject-matter,
+most conscientiously carrying out his own saying, that
+
+  "Out of olde feldys as men sey
+    Comyth all this newe corn from yere to yere,
+  And out of olde books in good fey
+    Cometh all this new science that men alere."
+
+How external a way he had of working over old materials, especially in his
+earlier work, is well illustrated in "The Parliament of Fowls," which he
+opens by relating the dream of Scipio, originally contained in Cicero's
+treatise on the "Republic," and preserved by Macrobius. This dream, which
+tells how Africanus appears to Scipio, and carries him up among the stars
+of the night, shows him Carthage, and prophesies to him of his future
+greatness, tells him of the blissful immortal life that is in store for
+those who have served their country, points out to him the brilliant
+celestial fires, and how insignificant the earth is in comparison with
+them, and opens his ears to the wondrous harmony of the spheres--this
+dream is as far removed from the main argument of the poem as anything
+well could be a contest between three falcons for the hand of a formel.
+The bringing together of such diverse elements presents no difficulties to
+the childlike stage of literary development that depends upon surface
+analogies for the linking together of its thoughts. Just as talking about
+his ancestor, the great Scipio Africanus, with the old King Masinissa
+caused Scipio to dream of him, so reading about this dream caused Chaucer,
+who has to close his book and go to bed for want of a light, to dream of
+Scipio Africanus also, who "was come and stood right at his bedis syde."
+
+Africanus then plays the part of conductor to Chaucer in a manner
+suggestive not only of his relations to Scipio, but of Virgil's relation
+to Dante, and brings him to the great gateway and through it into the
+garden of love. The description is of the temple of Venus in Boccaccio's
+"La Teseide." There Nature and the "Fowls" are introduced and described,
+and at last the point is reached. Nature proclaims that it is St.
+Valentine's day, and all the fowls may choose them mates. The royal falcon
+is given first choice, and chooses the lovely formel that sits upon
+Nature's hand. Two other ardent falcons declare their devotion to the same
+fowl, and Nature, when the formel declares that she will serve neither
+Venus nor Cupid and asks a respite for a year, decides that the three
+shall serve their lady another year--a pretty allegory supposed to refer
+to the wooing of Blanche of Lancaster by John of Gaunt.
+
+The main argument of this poem, when it finally is reached by artificially
+welding together rich links borrowed from other poets, is one of the few
+examples in Chaucer of subject-matter derived direct from a real event,
+but the putting of it in an allegorical form at once lays him under
+obligations to his poetic predecessors, not only on Anglo-Saxon soil, but
+in France and Italy.
+
+His most important contributions as an inventor are, of course, his
+descriptions of the Canterbury Pilgrims, which are the pure outcome of a
+keen observation of men and women at first hand. So lifelike are they that
+in them he has made the England of the fourteenth century live again. But
+how small a proportion of the bulk of the "Canterbury Tales" is contained
+in these glimpses of English life and manners. It is but the framework
+upon which luxuriate vines of fancy transplanted from many another garden,
+and even in its place resembling, if not borrowed from, Boccaccio.
+
+The thoroughly human instincts of the poet assert themselves, however, in
+the choice of the tales which he puts into the mouths of his pilgrims. He
+allows a place to the crudities and even the vulgarities of common stories
+as well as to culture-lore. The magic of the East, the love tales of
+Italy, the wisdom of philosophers, the common stories of the people, all
+give up their wealth to his gentle touch. With a keen sense of propriety
+he, with few exceptions, gives each one of his pilgrims a tale suited in
+its general tendency to the character of its narrator, and in the critical
+chatter of the pilgrims about the tales, reflects not only his own tastes,
+but that of the times, the opinions expressed frequently being most
+uncomplimentary in their tenor.
+
+In fine, the life of reality and the life of books is spread out before
+Chaucer, and his observation of both is keen and interested; and this it
+is which makes him much more than the "great translator" that Eustace Les
+Champs called him, and settles the nature of the "subtle thing" called
+spirit contributed by the individuality of the poet to his subject-matter.
+He brings everything within the reach of human sympathy, because his way
+of putting a story into his own words is sympathetic. He was a combination
+of the story-teller, the scholar, the poet, and the critic. As a scholar
+he brings in learned allusions that are entirely extraneous to the action
+in hand; as the story-teller, he takes delight in the tales that both the
+poet and the people have told; as the poet, his imagination dresses up a
+story with a fresh environment, often anachronous, and sometimes he alters
+the moral tone of the characters. Cressida is an interesting example of
+this. But instead of the characters suggesting by their own action and
+speech all the needed moral, Chaucer himself appears ever at hand to
+analyze and criticise and moralize, though he does it so delightfully that
+one hesitates to call him didactic. The result of all this is that the
+external form and the underlying essence of his subject-matter are not
+completely fused. We often see a sort of guileless working of the
+machinery of art, yet it is true, no doubt, though perhaps not to the
+extent insisted on by Morley, that he has something of the Shakespearian
+quality which enables him to show men as they really are, "wholly
+developed as if from within, not as described from without by an imperfect
+and prejudiced observer."
+
+In his great work, Spenser is no less dependent upon sources for his
+inspiration, but there is a marked difference in his use of them. Although
+his range of observation is much narrower than Chaucer's, hardly extending
+at all into the realm of actual human effort, yet he makes an advance in
+so far as his powers of redistribution are much greater than Chaucer's.
+
+The various knights of the "Fairy Queen" and their exploits are not
+modeled directly upon any previous stories, but they are made up of
+incidents similar to those found scattered all through classic lore; and
+as his inspirations were drawn in most cases directly from the
+fountain-head of story in the Greek writers--instead of as they filtered
+through the Latin, Italian, and French, with the inevitable accretions
+that result from migrations,--and from the comparatively unalloyed
+Arthurian legends, there is a clearer reflection in them of the cosmic
+elements that shine through both the Greek and Arthurian originals than is
+found in Chaucer.
+
+Although Spenser was certainly unaware of any such modern refinement of
+the mythologist as a solar myth, yet the "Fairy Queen" forms a curious and
+interesting study on account of the survivals everywhere evident of solar
+characteristics in his characters and plots. Indeed it could hardly be
+otherwise, considering his intention, and his method of carrying it out,
+which he, himself, explains in his quaint letter to Sir Walter
+Raleigh--namely, "to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and
+gentle discipline." He goes on:
+
+    "I close the history of King Arthur as most fit for the excellency of
+    his person, being made famous by many men's former works, and also
+    further from danger and envy of suspicion of present time. In which I
+    have followed all the antique poets historical; first Homer, who in
+    the person of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governor
+    and a virtuous man, the one in his 'Iliad,' the other in his
+    'Odyssey'; then Virgil, whose like intention was to do in the person
+    of Æneas: After him, Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando, and
+    lately Tasso dissevered them again, and formed both parts in two
+    persons, the part which they in Philosophy call Ethice or virtues of a
+    private man, colored in his Rinaldo, the other, named Politice, in his
+    Godfieldo. By example of which excellent poets, I labor to portray in
+    Arthur before he was King, the image of a brave Knight perfected in
+    the twelve private moral virtues as Aristotle hath devised, the which
+    is the purpose of these first twelve books."
+
+In the fashioning of his knight he took Arthur, a hero whose life as it
+appears in the early romances is inextricably mingled with solar elements,
+and has built up his virtues upon other ancient solar heroes. Here are all
+the paraphernalia of solar mythology: invincible knights with marvelous
+weapons, brazen castles guarded by dragons, marriage with a beautiful
+maiden and parting from the bride to engage in new quests, an enchantress
+who turns men into animals, even the outcast child; but none of the
+incidents appear intact. It is as if there had been a great explosion in
+the ancient land of romance and that in the mending up of things the
+separate pieces are all recognizable, although all joined together in a
+different pattern, while under all is the allegory. A gentle knight is
+no longer a solar hero as set forth by Max Müller or Cox, but Holiness;
+his invincible armor is not the all-powerful rays of the sun, but truth;
+the enchantress not night casting a spell over mortals, but sensuous
+pleasure entangling them.
+
+These two poets, Chaucer and Spenser, are prototypes of two poet types of
+two poetical tendencies that have gone on developing side by side in
+English literature: Chaucer, democratic, interested supremely in the
+personalities of men and women, portraying the real, and Spenser,
+aristocratic, interested in imaging forth an ideal of manhood, choosing
+his subject-matter from sources that will lend themselves to such a
+purpose; Chaucer drawing his lessons out of the real actions of humanity;
+Spenser framing his story so that it will illustrate the moral he wishes
+to inculcate.
+
+Shakespeare, of course, ranges himself in line with Chaucer. His interest
+centered on character, and wherever a story capable of character
+development presented itself, that he chose, altered it in outline
+comparatively little, and when he did so it was in order to carry forward
+the dramatic _motif_ which he infused into his subject. The dramatic
+form in which he wrote furnished him a better medium for reaching a
+complete welding together of the external and spiritual side of his
+subject-matter. Where Chaucer hinted at the possibilities of an artistic
+development of character that would cause the events of the story to
+appear as the inevitable outcome of the hidden springs of action,
+Shakespeare accomplished it, and peopled the world of imagination with
+group after group of living, acting characters.
+
+In the nineteenth century Tennyson and Browning have represented, broadly
+speaking, these two tendencies. As with Spenser, the classics and the
+Arthurian legends have been the sources from which Tennyson has drawn most
+largely; but although a philosophical undercurrent is this poet's
+spiritual addition to the subject-matter, his method of putting his soul
+inside his work is very different from Spenser's. He does not tear the old
+myths to pieces and join them together again after a pattern of his own to
+fit his allegorical situation, but keeps the events of his stories almost
+unchanged, in this particular resembling Chaucer and Shakespeare,
+and--except in a few instances, such as Tithonus and Lucretius, where the
+classic spirit of the originals is preserved--he infuses in his subject a
+vein of philosophy, illustrating those modern tendencies of English
+thought of which Tennyson, himself, was the exemplar. Even when inventing
+subjects, founded upon the experiences of everyday life, he so manipulates
+the story as to make it illustrate some of his favorite moral maxims. His
+characters do not act from motives which are the inherent necessities of
+their natures, but they act in accordance with Tennyson's preconceived
+notions of how they ought to act. He manipulates the elements of character
+to suit his own view of development, just as Spenser manipulated the
+elements of the story to suit his own allegorical purpose.
+
+Browning is the nineteenth-century heir of Chaucer; but it is doubtful
+whether Chaucer would recognize his own offspring, so remarkable has the
+development been in those five centuries. With Chaucer's keen interest in
+human nature deepened to a profound insight into the very soul of
+humanity, and the added wealth of these centuries of human history,
+Browning not only had a far wider range of choice in subject-matter, but
+he was enabled to instil into it greater intellectual and emotional
+complexities.
+
+Rarely has he treated any subject that has already been treated poetically
+unless we except the transcripts from the classics soon to be
+considered. Wherever he saw an interesting historical personage,
+interesting, not on account of his brilliant achievements in the eyes of
+the world, but on account of potentialities of character, such a one he
+has set before us to reveal himself. There are between twenty and thirty
+portraits of this nature in his work, chosen from all sorts and conditions
+of men--men who stand for some phase of growth in human thought; and
+always in developing a personality he gives the kernel of truth upon which
+their peculiar point of view is based. Thus, among the musical poems, Abt
+Vogler speaks for the intuitionalist--he who is blessed by a glimpse of
+the absolute truth. Charles Avison, on the other hand, is the philosopher
+of the relative in music and the arts generally. Among the art poems, Fra
+Lippo Lippi is the apostle of beauty in realism, Andrea del Sarto the
+attainer of perfection in form. In the religious poems the Jewish
+standpoint is illustrated in "Saul" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra," the Christian in
+the portrait of John in "The Death in the Desert"; the empirical reasoner
+in "Paracelsus."
+
+This is only one of Browning's methods in the choice and use of
+subject-matter. The characters and incidents in his stories are
+frequently the result of pure invention, but he sets them in an
+environment recreated from history, developing their individualities in
+harmony with the environment, thus giving at one stroke the spirit of the
+time and the individual qualities of special representatives of the time.
+Examples of this are: "My Last Duchess," where the Duke is an entirely
+imaginary person and the particular incident is invented, but he is made
+to act and talk in a way perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the
+time--mediæval Italy. "Hugues of Saxe-Gotha" is another being of
+Browning's fancy, who yet represents to perfection the spirit of the old
+fugue writers. "Luria," "The Soul's Tragedy," "In a Balcony," all
+represent the same method.
+
+Another plan pursued by the poet is either to invent or borrow a
+historical personage into whose mouth he puts the defence of some course
+of action or ethical standard that may or may not be founded upon the
+highest ideals. Sludge, the hero of "Fifine at the Fair," Bishop Blougram,
+Hohenstiel-Schwangau, range themselves in this group.
+
+There are comparatively few cases where he has taken a complete story and
+developed its spiritual possibilities without much change in external
+detail, but how adequate his art was to such ends, "The Ring and the
+Book," "Inn Album," "Two Poets of Croisic," "Red Cotton Nightcap Country,"
+the historical dramas of "Strafford," and "King Victor and King Charles"
+fully prove, including, as they do, some of his finest masterpieces.
+
+History and story have furnished many of the incidents which he has worked
+up in his dramatic lyrics and romances like "Clive," "Hervé Riel,"
+"Donald," etc. There remains, however, a large number of poems containing
+some of Browning's loveliest work in which the subject-matter is, as far
+as we know, the creation of pure, unadulterated fancy. "A Blot in the
+'Scutcheon," "In a Balcony," "Colombe's Birthday," "Childe Roland," "James
+Lee's Wife" are some of them. Even in this rapid survey of the field the
+fact is patent that Browning's range of subject-matter is infinitely wider
+and his method of developing it far more varied than has been that of any
+other English poet. He seems the first to have completely shaken himself
+free from the trammels of classic or mediæval literature. There are no
+echoes of Arthur and his Knights in his poetry, the shadows of the Greek
+gods and goddesses exert no spell--except in the few instances when he
+deliberately chose a Greek subject.
+
+The fact that Browning was so free from classical influence in the great
+body of his work as compared with the other chief poets of the nineteenth
+century gives an especial interest to those poems in which he chose
+classical themes for his subjects. There are not more than ten all told,
+and one of these is a translation, yet they represent some of his finest
+and most original work, for Browning could not touch a classical theme
+without infusing into it that grasp and insight peculiar to his own
+genius.
+
+His first and most conventionally classical poem is the fragment in "Men
+and Women," "Artemis Prologizes," written in 1842. It was to have been the
+introduction to a long poem telling of the mad love of Hippolytus for a
+nymph of Artemis, after that goddess had brought about his resuscitation.
+It has been suggested by Mr. Boynton in an interesting paper that Browning
+shows traces of the influence of Landor in his poetry. This fragment
+certainly furnishes argument for this opinion, though it has a strength of
+diction along with its Greek severity and terseness of style which leads
+to the conclusion that the influence came from the fountain head of
+Greek poetry itself rather than through the lesser muse of this
+nineteenth-century Greek.
+
+The poem is said to have been begun on a sick-bed and when the poet
+recovered he had forgotten or lost interest in his plans. This is to be
+regretted for if he had continued as he began, the poem would have stood
+unique in his work as a true survival of Greek subject wedded with
+classical form and style, and would certainly have challenged comparison
+with the best work done in this field by Landor or Swinburne, who tell
+over the classical stories or even invent new episodes, but, when all is
+said, do not write as if they were actually themselves Greeks.
+
+There is no other instance in Browning of such a survival. In his other
+poems on Greek subjects it is Browning bringing Greek life to our ken with
+wonderful distinctness, but doing it according to his own accustomed
+poetical methods, or, as in "Ixion," a Greek story has been used as a
+symbol for the inculcating of a philosophy which is largely Browning's
+own.
+
+In spite of the fact that he has turned to Greece so seldom for
+inspiration, his Greek poems range from such stirring pictures of Greek
+life and feeling as one gets in the splendid dramatic idyl
+"Pheidippides," based on a historical incident, through the imaginary
+"Cleon," in which is found the sublimated essence of Greek philosophical
+thought at the time of Christ--thought, weary of law and beauty, longing
+for a fresh inspiration, knowing not what, and unable to perceive it in
+the new ideal of love being taught by the Christians--to "Aristophanes'
+Apology," in which the Athens of his day, with its literary and political
+factions, is presented with a force and analysis which place it second
+only to "The Ring and the Book."
+
+This poem taken, with Balaustion, gives the reader not only a
+comprehensive view of the historical atmosphere of the time but indirectly
+shows the poet's own attitude toward the literary war between Euripides
+and Aristophanes. So different are Browning's Greek poems from all other
+poems upon classical subjects that it will be interesting to dwell upon
+the most important of them at greater length than has been deemed
+necessary in the case of the more widely known and read of the poems.
+
+"Cleon" links itself with the nineteenth century, because of its dealing
+with the problem of immortality, a problem which has been ever present in
+the mind of the century. Cleon has, beside that type of synthetic mind
+which belongs to a ripe phase of civilization. Though he is a Greek and a
+pagan, he stretches hands across the centuries to men of the type of
+Morris or Matthew Arnold. He is the latest child of his own time, the heir
+of all the ages during which Greece had developed its æsthetic perfection,
+discovered the inadequacy of its established religion, come through its
+philosophers and poets to a perception of the immortality of the soul, and
+sunk again to a skepticism which had no vision of personal immortality at
+least, though among the stoics there were some who believed in an
+absorption into divine being. Cleon would fain believe in personal
+immortality but cannot, and, like Matthew Arnold, believes in facing death
+imperturbably.
+
+In "Balaustion's Adventure" a historical tradition is used as the central
+episode of the poem, but life and romance are given to it by the creation
+of the heroine, Balaustion, a young Greek woman whose fascinating
+personality dominates the whole poem. She was a Rhodian, else her freedom
+of action and speech might seem too modern, but among the islands of
+Greece, at least at the time of Euripides, there still survived that
+attitude toward woman which we see reflected in the Homeric epics. Away
+from Athens, too, Euripides was a power; hence his defence is put into the
+mouth of one not an Athenian. She had saved a shipload of Athenian
+sympathizers by reciting Euripides when they were in danger from the
+hostile Syracusans.
+
+[Illustration: EURIPIDES]
+
+Besides the romantic touch which is given the story by the creation of the
+lyric girl, there is an especial fitness in making the enthusiastic
+devotee of this poet a woman, for no one among the ancients has so fully
+and sympathetically portrayed woman in all her human possibilities of
+goodness and badness as Euripides, yet he has been called a
+woman-hater--because some of his men have railed against women--but one
+Alkestis is enough to offset any dramatic utterances of his men about
+women. The poet's attitude should be looked for in his power of portraying
+women of fine traits, not in any opinions expressed by his men.
+Furthermore, Browning had before him a model of Balaustion in her
+enthusiasm for Euripides, in Mrs. Browning. These circumstances are
+certainly sufficient to prove the appropriateness of making a Rhodian girl
+the defender of Euripides.
+
+There is nothing more delicious in Browning than Balaustion's relation of
+"Alkestis," as she had seen it acted, to her three friends. Her woman's
+comment and criticisms combine a Browning's penetration of the fine points
+in the play with a girl's idealism. Such a combination of masculine
+intellectualism and feminine charm has been known in women of all
+centuries. As the translation of the beautiful play of "Alkestis"
+proceeds, Balaustion interprets its art and moral, defending her favorite
+poet, not with the ponderousness of a grave critic weighing the influences
+which may have molded his genius, or calculating the pros and cons of his
+style, but with the swift appreciation of a mind and spirit full of the
+ardor of sympathy. Moreover, her talk of the play being a recollection of
+how it appeared to her as she saw it acted, the mere text is constantly
+enlarged upon and made vital with flashing glimpses of the action, as, for
+example, in the passage just after the funeral of Alkestis:
+
+  "So, to the struggle off strode Herakles,
+  When silence closed behind the lion-garb,
+  Back came our dull fact settling in its place,
+  Though heartiness and passion half-dispersed
+  The inevitable fate. And presently
+  In came the mourners from the funeral,
+  One after one, until we hoped the last
+  Would be Alkestis, and so end our dream.
+  Could they have really left Alkestis lone
+  I' the wayside sepulchre! Home, all save she!
+  And when Admetos felt that it was so,
+  By the stand-still: when he lifted head and face
+  From the two hiding hands and peplos' fold,
+  And looked forth, knew the palace, knew the hills,
+  Knew the plains, knew the friendly frequence there,
+  And no Alkestis any more again,
+  Why, the whole woe billow-like broke on him."
+
+Again, her criticism of Admetos gives at once the natural feeling of a
+girl who could not be satisfied with what seemed to her his selfish
+action, and Browning's feeling that Euripides saw its selfishness just as
+surely as Balaustion, despite the fact that it was in keeping, as numerous
+critics declare, with the customs of the age, and would not by any of his
+contemporaries be regarded as selfish on his part:
+
+  "So he stood sobbing: nowise insincere,
+  But somehow child-like, like his children, like
+  Childishness the world over. What was new
+  In this announcement that his wife must die?
+  What particle of pain beyond the pact
+  He made with his eyes wide open, long ago--
+  Made and was, if not glad, content to make?
+  Now that the sorrow, he had called for, came,
+  He sorrowed to the height: none heard him say,
+  However, what would seem so pertinent,
+  'To keep this pact, I find surpass my power;
+  Rescind it, Moirai! Give me back her life,
+  And take the life I kept by base exchange!
+  Or, failing that, here stands your laughing-stock
+  Fooled by you, worthy just the fate o' the fool
+  Who makes a pother to escape the best
+  And gain the worst you wiser Powers allot!'
+  No, not one word of this; nor did his wife
+  Despite the sobbing, and the silence soon
+  To follow, judge so much was in his thought--
+  Fancy that, should the Moirai acquiesce,
+  He would relinquish life nor let her die.
+  The man was like some merchant who in storm,
+  Throws the freight over to redeem the ship;
+  No question, saving both were better still,
+  As it was,--why, he sorrowed, which sufficed.
+  So, all she seemed to notice in his speech
+  Was what concerned her children."
+
+Among modern critics who take the conventional ground in regard to Admetos
+may be cited Churton Collins, whose opinion is, of course, weighty. He
+writes:
+
+    "Alcestis would be considered fortunate for having had an opportunity
+    of displaying so conspicuously the fidelity to a wife's first and
+    capital duty. Had Admetus prevented such a sacrifice he would have
+    robbed Alcestis of an honor which every nobly ambitious woman in
+    Hellas would have coveted. This is so much taken for granted by the
+    poet that all that he lays stress on in the drama is the virtue
+    rewarded by the return of Alcestis to life, the virtue characteristic
+    of Admetus, the virtue of hospitality; to this duty in all the agony
+    of his sorrow Admetus had been nobly true, and as a reward for what he
+    had thus earned, the wife who had been equally true to woman's
+    obligations was restored all-glorified to home and children and mutual
+    love."
+
+Most readers, however, will find it difficult to put themselves into the
+appropriate Greek frame of mind, and will sympathize with Browning's
+supposition that after all Euripides had transcended current ideas on the
+subject and deliberately intended to convey such an interpretation of the
+character of Admetos as Balaustion gives.
+
+Balaustion shows her penetration again in her appreciation of Herakles. He
+distinguishes clearly between evil that is inherent in the nature as the
+selfishness of Admetos, and evil which is more or less external, growing
+out of conditions incident to the time rather than from any real trait of
+nature. Herakles' delight in the hospitality accorded him, his drinking
+and feasting in the interim of his labors, did not touch the genuine,
+large-hearted helpfulness of the demigod, who became sober the moment he
+learned there was sorrow in the house and need of his aid.
+
+In her proposed version of the story, Balaustion is surely the romantic
+girl, who would have her hero a hero indeed and in every way the equal of
+his spouse. Yet if we delve below this romanticism of Balaustion we shall
+find the poet's own belief in the almost omniscient power of human love
+the basis of the relation between Admetos and Alkestis.
+
+The soul of Alkestis in one look entered into that of Admetos; she died,
+but he is entirely guiltless of agreeing to her death. Alkestis herself
+had made the pact with Apollo to die for her husband. He, when he learns
+it, refuses to accept the sacrifice, and unable to persuade him that his
+duty to humanity demands that he accept it, Alkestis asks him to look at
+her. Then her soul enters his, but when she goes to Hades and demands to
+become a ghost, the Queen of Hades replies:
+
+  "Hence, thou deceiver! This is not to die,
+  If, by the very death which mocks me now,
+  The life, that's left behind and past my power,
+  Is formidably doubled--Say, there fight
+  Two athletes, side by side, each athlete armed
+  With only half the weapons, and no more,
+  Adequate to a contest with their foes.
+  If one of these should fling helm, sword and shield
+  To fellow--shieldless, swordless, helmless late--
+  And so leap naked o'er the barrier, leave
+  A combatant equipped from head to heel,
+  Yet cry to the other side, 'Receive a friend
+  Who fights no longer!' 'Back, friend, to the fray!'
+  Would be the prompt rebuff; I echo it.
+  Two souls in one were formidable odds:
+  Admetos must not be himself and thou!
+
+  "And so, before the embrace relaxed a whit,
+  The lost eyes opened, still beneath the look;
+  And lo, Alkestis was alive again,
+  And of Admetos' rapture who shall speak?"
+
+How unique a treatment of a classical subject this poem is, is
+self-evident. Not content with making a superb translation of the play,
+remarkable both for its literalness and for its poetic beauty, the poet
+has dared to present that translation indirectly through the mouth of
+another speaker, and to incorporate with it a running commentary of
+criticism in blank verse. Still more daring was it to make play and
+criticism an episode in a dramatic monologue in which we learn not only
+the story of the rescue of the shipload of Athenian sympathizers, but the
+story of Balaustion's love. Along with all this complexity of interest
+there is still room for a lifelike portrayal of Balaustion herself, one of
+the loveliest conceptions of womanhood in literature.
+
+To reiterate what I have upon another occasion expressed in regard to her,
+she is a girl about whom the fancy loves to cling--she is so joyous, so
+brave, and so beautiful, and possessed of so rare a mind scintillating
+with wit, wisdom and critical insight, not Browning's own mind either
+except in so far as his sympathies were with Euripides. Her ardor for
+purity and perfection is perhaps peculiarly feminine. It is quite
+different from that of the mind tormented by the problem of evil and
+taking refuge in a partisanship of evil as a force which works for good
+and without which the world would be a waste of insipidity. Her suggested
+version of the Alkestis story converts Admetos into as much of a saint as
+Alkestis, and makes an exquisite and soul-stirring romance of their
+perfect union, though it must be admitted that it would do away with all
+the intensity and dramatic force of the play as it is presented by
+Euripides. Like the angels who rejoice more over one sinner returned than
+over the ninety and nine that did not go astray, an artist prefers the
+contrast and movement of a sinning and regenerated Admetos to an Admetos
+more suited from the first to be the consort of Alkestis. This is the
+touch, however, which preserves Balaustion's feminine charm and makes her
+truly her own self--an ardent soul very far from being simply Browning's
+mouthpiece.
+
+"Aristophanes' Apology" is a still more remarkable play in its complexity.
+Again, Balaustion is the speaker, and Browning has set himself the task in
+this monologue of relating the fall of Athens, of presenting the
+personality of Aristophanes, of defending Euripides, a translation of
+whose play, "Herakles," is included, and incidentally sketching the
+history of Greek comedy, all through the mouth of the one speaker,
+Balaustion. Not until one has grasped the law by which the poet has
+accomplished this, and has moreover freshly in his mind the facts of Greek
+history at the time of Athens' fall, and Greek literature, especially the
+plays of Aristophanes and Euripides, can the poem be thoroughly enjoyed.
+
+In the very first line the suggestion of the scene setting is given, and
+such suggestions occur from time to time all through the poem. It should
+be observed that they are never brought in for themselves alone, but are
+always used in connection with some mood of Balaustion's or as imagery in
+relation to some thought. While the reader is thus kept conscious of the
+background of wind and wave, as Balaustion and her husband voyage toward
+Rhodes, it is not until the end of the poem that we learn with a pleasant
+surprise that the boat on which they are sailing is the same one saved
+once by Balaustion when she recited Euripides' "sweetest, saddest song."
+Thus there is a dramatic denouement in connection with the scene setting.
+
+Through the expression of a mood of despair on the part of Balaustion at
+the opening of the poem the reader is put in possession not only of the
+scene setting but of the occasion of the voyage, which is the overthrow
+of Athens. From the mood of despair Balaustion passes to one in which she
+describes how she could better have borne to see Athens perish. This
+carries her on to a more hopeful frame of mind, in which she can foresee
+the spiritual influence of Athens persisting. The peace of mind ensuing
+upon this consideration makes it possible for her calmly to survey the
+events connected with its downfall, among which the picturesque episode of
+the dancing of the flute girls to the demolition of the walls of the
+Piræus is conspicuous. She then sees the vision of the immortal Athens
+while Sparta the victorious in arms will die. Then comes a mood in which
+she declares it will be better to face the grief than to brood over it,
+which leads to her proposing to Euthukles that they treat the fall of
+Athens as a tragic theme, as the poet might do, and enact it on the
+voyage. Then grief over the recent events takes possession of her again,
+and now with the feminine privilege of changing her mind, she thinks it
+would be better to rehearse an event which happened to herself a year ago
+as a prologue. Speaking of adventures causes her very naturally to drop
+into reminiscences about her first adventure, when she recited
+Euripides and met the man who was to become her husband.
+
+[Illustration: ARISTOPHANES]
+
+Thus, through this perfectly natural transition from one mood to another,
+Balaustion leads up to the real subject-matter of the poem, Aristophanes'
+defence of himself, which, however, is preceded by an account of the
+effect of the death of Euripides upon the Athenians as witnessed by
+Euthukles, his death being the occasion of Aristophanes' call on
+Balaustion. What she calls the prologue is really the main theme of the
+poem, while all her talk up to this point is truly the prologue. The
+actual account of the fall of Athens does not come until the conclusion,
+and is related in comparatively few words.
+
+What seems, then, to be the chief theme of the poem with its setting of
+wind and wave and bark bears somewhat the same relation to the real theme
+as incidental music does to a play. Upon first thoughts it may seem like a
+clumsy contrivance for introducing Aristophanes upon the scene, but in the
+end it will be perceived, I think, that it serves the artistic purpose of
+placing Aristophanes in proper perspective. Balaustion with her
+exquisitely human moods and progressive spirit forms the right complement
+to the decaying ideals of Aristophanes, and gives him the proper flavor
+of antiquity. Instead of seeing him in the broad light of a direct
+dramatic presentation we see him indirectly through Balaustion's thoughts
+and moods, who, though permitting him to do full justice to himself, yet
+surrounds him all the time with the subtle influence of her sympathy for
+Euripides.
+
+As the better way to follow the development of the preliminary part of the
+poem is by regarding every step as the outcome of a mood on the part of
+Balaustion, so the better way of following Aristophanes through what seems
+his interminable defence of himself is again by tracing the moods through
+which his arguments express themselves.
+
+Aristophanes comes in half drunk to make his call on Balaustion, and his
+first mood is one of graciousness toward her whose beauty has impressed
+his artistic perceptions, but noticing her dignity and its effect in
+routing the chorus, he immediately begins to be on the defensive. The
+disappearance of his chorus, however, takes him off on a little excursion
+about the moves which are being made by the city to cut down the expense
+of dramatic performances by curtailing the chorus. In a spirit of bravado
+he declares that he does not care so long as he has his actors left. A
+coarse reference causes Balaustion to turn and he changes his mood. He
+acknowledges he is drunk and rushes off into a defence of drunkenness in
+general for playwrights and for himself, which on this occasion came about
+on account of the supper he and his players have attended. He rattles on
+about the supper, telling how the merriment increased until something
+happened. The thought of this something changes his mood completely.
+Balaustion notices it, he reads her expression, and characteristically
+explains the change in himself as due to her fixed regard. The reader is
+left in suspense as to the something which happened, yet it haunts the
+memory, and he feels convinced that some time he is to know what it was.
+
+Now Aristophanes bids Balaustion speak to him without fear. She does so,
+conveying in her welcome both her disapproval and her admiration.
+Aristophanes, evidently piqued, does not answer, but makes personal
+remarks upon the manner of her speech, asking her if she learned tragedy
+from _him_--Euripides. This starts him off on dreams of a new comedy in
+which women shall act, but he concludes that his mission is to ornament
+comedy as he finds it, not invent a new comedy.
+
+This gives Balaustion a chance to ask if in his last play, later than the
+one Euthukles had seen, he had smoothed this ancient club of comedy he
+speaks of into a more human and less brutal implement of warfare, and was
+it a conviction of this new method he might use in comedy which was the
+something that happened at the feast. Aristophanes, as usual when he is
+cornered, makes no direct reply, but asks if Euthukles saw his last play,
+to which Balaustion frankly replies that having seen the first he never
+cared to see the following. Aristophanes avows he can show cause why he
+wrote them, but glances off in a sarcastic reference to Euripides, whose
+art he says belongs to the closet or the cave, not to the world. He
+prefers to stick to the old forms of art and make Athens happy in what
+coarse way she desires. He then proceeds to enlarge upon what that is.
+Then he changes again and asks with various excursions into side issues
+(for example: the rise of comedy; how it is now being regarded by the
+government, which favors tragedy, giving him another chance for a dig at
+Euripides) if he is the man likely to be satisfied to be classed merely a
+comic poet since he wrote the "Birds?" Balaustion encourages him a little
+here, and, cheered up, he goes on to tell how he gave the people draught
+divine in "Wasps" and "Grasshoppers," and how he praised peace by
+showing the kind of pleasures one may have when peace reigns--and still at
+every opportunity casting slurs at the tragic muse, especially Euripides.
+
+He goes on describing his play until he touches on some of the sarcasms
+which make Balaustion wince.
+
+Then he turns about and declares he loathes as much as she does the things
+of which he tells, but his attempts at bringing comedy up to a high level
+having failed, he is obliged to give the Athenians what they want, a
+smartened up version of the "Thesmaphoriazousai," which had failed the
+year before. He describes his triumph with this which was being celebrated
+at the supper when the something happened which is now at last
+described--namely, the entrance of Sophocles, who announces that he
+intends to commemorate the death of Euripides by having his chorus clothed
+in black and ungarlanded at the performance of his play next month.
+
+This startling scene, being prepared for and not brought in until
+Aristophanes has done much talking, seems to throw a sudden flash of
+reality into the poem. Ill-natured criticism, Aristophanes shows, follows
+on the part of the feasters, though Aristophanes' mood is one of sudden
+recognition of the value of Euripides. But when he, sobered for the time
+being, proposes a toast to the Tragic Muse, the feasters consider it a
+joke. He quickly accepts the situation, and comes off triumphant by
+proposing a toast to both muses.
+
+After this Balaustion asks Aristophanes if he will commemorate Euripides
+with them. But his sober mood is gone. He looks about the room, sees
+things that belong to Euripides, and immediately begins stabbing at him.
+Balaustion objects, and upon the theme of respect to the dead he begins
+his usual invective against his rivals, but finally ends by giving respect
+to Euripides, him whose serenity, he declares, could never with his gibes
+be disturbed.
+
+After venting this mood of animosity he begins soberly to discuss the
+origin of comedy. He traces its growth to the point where he found it, and
+enlarges on the improvements he has made, touching, as always, upon the
+criticisms of his opposers, and finally arriving at the chief point of
+difference between himself and Euripides, which he enlarges upon at great
+length. Here the incidental music breaks in with talk between Balaustion
+and Euthukles, in which the former rather tries to excuse herself from
+relating her reply to Aristophanes.
+
+However, she does give her reply, which is conducted in a more truly
+argumentative fashion than the defence of Aristophanes. She picks up his
+points and makes her points against him usually by denying the truth of
+what he has said. Her supreme defence is, however, the reading of the play
+"Herakles."
+
+Aristophanes, touched but not convinced, finally insists that he is
+Athens' best friend. He is no Thamuris to be punished for seeing beyond
+human vision. The last characteristic touch is when Aristophanes catches
+up the psalterion and sings the lyric of Thamuris. Then he departs, and
+Balaustion rehearses the last days of Athens, with Euthukles' part in
+delaying the tragedy of the doomed city.
+
+By threading one's way thus through the apology, not from the point of
+view of Aristophanes' arguments, but from the point of view of his moods,
+one experiences a tremendous sense of the personality of the man.
+Repetitions which are not required for the full presentation of his case
+take their place as natural to a man who is not only inordinately vain but
+is immediately swayed by every suggestion and emotion that comes to him.
+Owing to his volatile temperament the argument is varied by now a bit of
+vivid description like that of the archon's feast when Sophocles appeared,
+now by some merely personal remark to Balaustion.
+
+The criticism in this play, as in that of "Balaustion's Adventure," may be
+considered either as representing some phase of contemporary opinion about
+Aristophanes or as expressing the opinion of the poet himself.
+Balaustion's indignation is especially aroused by the two plays, "The
+Lusistrata" and the "Thesmophoriazousai," both of which she finds utterly
+detestable. It is interesting to compare with this entirely unfavorable
+criticism the feeling of such distinguished classical scholars as Gilbert
+Murray and J. A. Symonds. The first Murray describes as a play "full of
+daring indecency, it is true, but the curious thing is that Aristophanes,
+while professing to ridicule the women, is all through on their side. The
+jokes made by the superior sex at the expense of the inferior--to give
+them their Roman names--are seldom remarkable either for generosity or
+refinement, and it is our author's pleasant humor to accuse everybody of
+every vice he can think of at the moment. Yet with the single exception
+that he credits women with an inordinate fondness for wine parties--the
+equivalent it would seem of afternoon tea--he makes them on the whole
+perceptibly more sensible and more sympathetic than his men."
+
+Of the second play Symonds speaks with actual enthusiasm. "It has a
+regular plot--an intrigue and a solution--and its persons are not
+allegorical but real. Thus it approaches the standard of modern comedy.
+But the plot, though gigantic in its scale, and prodigious in its wealth
+of wit and satire, is farcical. The artifices by which Euripides endeavors
+to win Agathon to undertake his cause, the disguise of Muesilochus in
+female attire, the oratory of the old man against the women in the midst
+of their assembly, his detection, the momentary suspension of the dramatic
+action by his seizure of the supposed baby, his slaughter of the swaddled
+wine jar, his apprehension by Cleisthenes, the devices and disguises by
+which Euripides endeavors to extricate his father-in-law from the scrape,
+and the final _ruse_ by which he eludes the Scythian bowmen, and carries
+off Muesilochus in triumph--all these form a series of highly diverting
+comic scenes." Again, "There is no passage in Aristophanes more amusing
+than the harangue of Muesilochus. The portrait, too, of Agathon in the act
+of composition is exquisitely comic. But the crowning sport of the
+'Thesmophoriazousai' is in the last scene when Muesilochus adapts the
+Palamedes and the Helen of Euripides to his own forlorn condition,
+jumbling up the well-known verses of these tragedies with coarse-flavored,
+rustical remarks; and when at last Euripides, himself, acts Echo and
+Perseus to the Andromeda of his father-in-law, and both together mystify
+the policeman by their ludicrous utterance of antiphonal lamentation."
+
+In her welcome of him, Balaustion expresses rather what she thinks he
+might be than what she really thinks he is. She welcomes him:
+
+  "Good Genius! Glory of the poet, glow
+  O' the humorist who castigates his kind,
+  Suave summer-lightning lambency which plays
+  On stag-horned tree, misshapen crag askew,
+  Then vanishes with unvindictive smile
+  After a moment's laying black earth bare.
+  Splendor of wit that springs a thunder ball--
+  Satire--to burn and purify the world,
+  True aim, fair purpose: just wit justly strikes
+  Injustice,--right, as rightly quells the wrong,
+  Finds out in knaves', fools', cowards', armory
+  The tricky tinselled place fire flashes through.
+  No damage else, sagacious of true ore;
+  Wit learned in the laurel, leaves each wreath
+  O'er lyric shell or tragic barbiton,--
+  Though alien gauds be singed,--undesecrate."
+
+Her attitude here is very like that of criticism in general, except that
+she is more or less sarcastic, meaning to imply that such Aristophanes
+might be but is not. Symonds, on the other hand, thinks him really what
+Balaustion thinks he might be.
+
+"If," he says, "Coleridge was justified in claiming the German word
+Lustspiel for the so-called comedies of Shakespeare, we have a far greater
+right to appropriate this wide and pregnant title to the plays of
+Aristophanes. The brazen mask which crowns his theatre smiles indeed
+broadly, serenely, as if its mirth embraced the universe; but its hollow
+eye-sockets suggest infinite possibilities of profoundest irony.
+Buffoonery carried to the point of paradox, wisdom disguised as insanity,
+and gaiety concealing the whole sum of human disappointment, sorrow and
+disgust, seem ready to escape from its open but rigid lips, which are
+molded to a proud perpetual laughter. It is a laughter which spares
+neither God nor man--which climbs Olympus only to drag down the immortals
+to its scorn, and trails the pall of august humanity in the mire; but
+which, amid its mockery and blasphemy, seems everlastingly asserting, as
+by paradox, that reverence of the soul which bends our knees to heaven and
+makes us respect our brothers."
+
+One cannot help feeling, in view of these very diverse opinions, that both
+are exaggerated. The enthusiasm of Symonds seems almost fanatic. Though no
+one of penetration can fail to see the wit and wisdom, and at times, in
+such lyrics as those in "The Clouds," the poetic charm of Aristophanes,
+the person of fastidious taste, whether a Greek girl of his own day, or a
+man of these latter days, must sometimes feel that his buffoonery
+oversteps the bounds of true wit, even when it is not shadowed by a
+coarseness not to be borne at the present day. When Balaustion asks him
+"in plain words,"
+
+  "Have you exchanged brute blows, which teach the brute
+  Man may surpass him in brutality,--
+  For human fighting, or true god-like force
+  Which breeds persuasion nor needs fight at all?"
+
+Aristophanes replies that it had not been his intention to turn art's
+fabric upside down and invent an entirely new species of comedy. That sort
+of thing can be done by one who has turned his back on life, friendly
+faces, sympathetic cheer, as Euripides had done in his Salaminian cave.
+
+This may be regarded, on the whole, as a good bit of defence on
+Aristophanes' part. It is equivalent to his saying that there was no use
+in his trying to be anything for which his genius had not fitted him. This
+chimes in, again, with such authoritative criticism as Murray's, who
+declares: "The general value of his view of life, and, above all, his
+treatment of his opponent's alleged vices, may well be questioned. Yet
+admitting that he often opposed what was best in his age, or advocated it
+on the lowest grounds, admitting that his slanders are beyond description
+and that, as a rule, he only attacks the poor and the leaders of the poor,
+nevertheless he does it all with such exhuberant high spirits, such an air
+of its all being nonsense together, such insight and swiftness, such
+incomparable directness and charm of style, that even if some Archelaus
+had handed him over to Euripides to scourge, he would probably have
+escaped his well-earned whipping."
+
+Much of Aristophanes' defence consists in slurring at Euripides, against
+whom he waxes more and more fierce as he goes on. His plays furnish
+numerous illustrations of his rivalry with Euripides, yet curiously
+enough, as critics have pointed out, Aristophanes imitates Euripides to a
+noteworthy extent, so much so that the dramatist Cratinus invented a word
+to describe the style of the two--Euripid-Aristophanize. Judging from his
+parodies on Euripides, he must certainly have read and reread his plays
+until he knew them practically by heart.
+
+Balaustion, as Browning has portrayed her in this poem, is the lyric girl
+developed into splendid womanhood. She has a large heart and a large
+brain, as well as imagination and strong ethical fervor. Her intense
+feeling at the fall of Athens, which had been the ideal to her of
+greatness, and her reverential love for Euripides, her charity toward
+Aristophanes the man, if not toward his work, show how deep and
+far-reaching her sympathies were. Again, her imagination flashes forth in
+her picturesque descriptions of the ruined Athens and her prophetic
+picture of the new Athens, of the spirit which will arise in its place, in
+her telling portraiture of Aristophanes and his entrance into her house,
+as well as in many another passage. Her intellect shines out in her clever
+management of the argument with Aristophanes, and her ethical fervor in
+her denunciations of the moral depravity of certain of the plays.
+
+As to the question of whether a young Greek woman would be likely to
+criticise Aristophanes in this way, opinion certainly differs. History is,
+for the most part, silent about women. As Mahaffy says, it is only in the
+dramatists and the philosophers that we can get any glimpses of the woman
+of the time.
+
+Mahaffy's opinions are worth quoting as an example of the pessimism
+growing out of a bias in favor of a particular type of woman which he
+idealized in his own mind. He seems utterly incapable of appreciating the
+humanness of the women in the Greek dramatists, especially those in
+Euripides. "Sadder than the condition of the aged was that of women," he
+writes, "at this remarkable period. The days of the noble and
+high-principled Penelope, of the refined and intellectual Helen, of the
+innocent and spirited Nausikaa, of the gentle and patient Andromache, had
+passed away. Men no longer sought and respected the society of the gentler
+sex. Would that Euripides had even been familiar, as Homer was, with the
+sound of women brawling in the streets! For in these days they were
+confined to Asiatic silence and seclusion, while the whole life of the
+men, both in business and recreation, was essentially public. Just as the
+feverish excitement of political life nowadays prompts men to spend even
+their leisure in the clubs, where they meet companions of like passions
+and interests with themselves, so the Athenian gentleman only came home
+to eat and sleep. His leisure as well as his business kept him in the
+market place. His wife and daughters, ignorant of philosophy and politics,
+were strangers to his real life, and took no interest in his pursuits.
+
+"The results were fatal to Athenian society. The women, uninstructed,
+neglected, and enslaved, soon punished their oppressors with their own
+keen and bitter weapons, and with none keener than their vices. For, of
+course, all the grace and delicacy of female character disappeared.
+Intellectual power in women was distinctly associated with moral
+depravity, so that excessive ignorance and stupidity was considered the
+only guarantee of virtue. The qualifications for society became
+incompatible with the qualifications for home duties, so that the outcasts
+from society, as we call them, were not the immoral and the profligate but
+the honorable and the virtuous."
+
+Such is the view to be gleaned from history, and in Mahaffy's opinion the
+literature of the time tells the same story. He goes on: "When we consult
+the literature of the day, we find women treated either with contemptuous
+ridicule in comedy, or with still more contemptuous silence in history. In
+tragedy or in the social theories of the philosophers alone can we hope
+for a glimpse into the average character and position of Athenian women.
+Here at least we might have expected that the portraits drawn with such
+consummate skill by Homer would have been easily transferred to the
+Athenian stage. But to our astonishment we find the higher social feelings
+toward women so weak that the Athenian tragic poets seem quite unable to
+appreciate, or even to understand, the more delicate features in Homeric
+characters. They are painted so coarsely and ignorantly by Euripides that
+we should never recognize them but for their names. Base motives and
+unseemly wrangling take the place of chivalrous honor and graceful
+politeness.
+
+"But the critics of the day complained that Euripides degraded the ideal
+character of tragedy by painting human nature as he found it: in fact as
+it was, and not as it ought to be. Let us turn, then, to Sophokles, who
+painted the most ideal women which the imagination of a refined Athenian
+could conceive, and consider his most celebrated characters, his Antigone
+and his Elektra. A calm, dispassionate survey will, I think, pronounce
+them harsh and masculine. They act rightly, no doubt, and even nobly, but
+they do it in the most disagreeable way. Except in their external
+circumstances they differ in no respect from men."
+
+Certainly, the opinion expressed of the women of Euripides is tainted by
+the feeling that they ought to act like English matrons and their
+daughters.
+
+Quite a different impression is given by Symonds, who, in regard to some
+of the sentences occurring in Euripides which are uncomplimentary to
+women, says: "It is impossible to weigh occasional sententious sarcasms
+against such careful studies of heroic virtue in women as the Iphigenia,
+the Elektra, the Polyxena, the Alkestis."
+
+But the complete vindication of the fact that Balaustion and Mrs. Browning
+and our own women of to-day are on the right side in their appreciation of
+Euripides as the great woman's poet of antiquity is found in the opinion
+of our contemporary critic, Gilbert Murray, who more than thirty years
+after these poems were written writes of the "wonderful women-studies by
+which Euripides dazzled and aggrieved his contemporaries. They called him
+a hater of women; and Aristophanes makes the women of Athens conspire for
+revenge against him. Of course he was really the reverse. He loved and
+studied and expressed the women whom the Socratics ignored and Pericles
+advised to stay in their rooms. Crime, however, is always more striking
+and palpable than virtue. Heroines like Medea, Phaedra, Stheneboia,
+Aërope, Clytemnestra, perhaps fill the imagination more than those of the
+angelic or devoted type--Alcestis, who died to save her husband, Evadne
+and Laodamia, who could not survive theirs, and all the great list of
+virgin-martyrs. But the significant fact is that, like Ibsen, Euripides
+refuses to idealize any man, and does idealize women. There is one
+youth-martyr, Menoikeus in the 'Phænissae,' but his martyrdom is a
+masculine, businesslike performance--he gets rid of his prosaic father by
+a pretext about traveling money without that shimmer of loveliness that
+hangs over the virgins."
+
+Where then did Euripides find these splendid women of force and character?
+It seems quite impossible that he could have evolved them out of his own
+inner consciousness. He must have known women who served at least, in
+part, as models. Besides, there was undoubtedly a new woman movement in
+the air or Plato in his "Republic" would not have suggested a plan for
+educating men and women alike. The free women of Athens are known in some
+cases to have attained a high degree of culture. Aspasia, who became the
+wife of Pericles, is a shining example. There was Sappho, also, with her
+school of poetry attended by girls in Lesbos.
+
+Taking all these facts into consideration, it would seem that Browning was
+sufficiently justified in drawing such a woman as Balaustion, and that a
+woman of her penetrating intellect and ardor of spirit would love
+Euripides, and dislike Aristophanes, seems absolutely certain.
+
+Therefore, if the historical attitude is taken toward Balaustion and her
+criticism and appreciation, it can be on the whole accepted as reflecting
+what would probably be the feeling of an ardent woman-follower of
+Euripides in his own day.
+
+But, on the other hand, if the criticism be taken as Browning's own, it is
+open to question whether it is partisan rather than entirely broad-minded.
+Take the consensus of opinion of modern critics and we find them all
+agreed in regard to the genius of Aristophanes, though admitting that his
+coarseness must, at times, detract from their enjoyment of him.
+
+There is much truth in Symonds' criticism of the poem. He says of it: "As
+a sophist and a rhetorician of poetry, Mr. Browning proves himself
+unrivaled, and takes rank with the best writers of historical romances.
+Yet students may fairly accuse him of some special pleading in favor of
+his friends and against his foes. It is true that Aristophanes did not
+bring back again the golden days of Greece; true that his comedy revealed
+a corruption latent in Athenian life. But neither was Euripides in any
+sense a savior. Impartiality regards them both as equally destructive:
+Aristophanes, because he indulged animalism and praised ignorance in an
+age which ought to have outgrown both; Euripides, because he criticised
+the whole fabric of Greek thought and feeling in an age which had not yet
+distinguished between analysis and skepticism.
+
+"What has just been said about Mr. Browning's special pleading indicates
+the chief fault to be found with his poem. The point of view is modern.
+The situation is strained. Aristophanes becomes the scapegoat of Athenian
+sins, while Euripides shines forth a saint as well as a sage. Balaustion,
+for her part, beautiful as her conception truly is, takes up a position
+which even Plato could not have assumed. Into her mouth Mr. Browning has
+put the views of the most searching and most sympathetic modern analyst.
+She judges Euripides not as he appeared to his own Greeks, but as he
+strikes the warmest of his admirers, who compare his work with that of all
+the poets who have ever lived."
+
+It would seem that Mr. Symonds, himself, does some special pleading here.
+As we have seen, Euripides, though not a favorite in Athens, did have warm
+admirers in his own day; consequently there is nothing out of the way in
+portraying one of his contemporaries as an admirer. Furthermore,
+Balaustion does not represent him as a savior of his age. She sees only
+too clearly that in the narrow sense of convincing his age he has not been
+a success. What is her vision of the spiritual Athens which is to arise
+but a confession of this fact! Nor is it entirely improbable that she
+might be prophetic of a time when Euripides will be recognized as the true
+power. Any disciple of a poet ahead of his time perceives these things.
+One should be careful in judging of the poem as good modern criticism not
+to be entirely guided by the opinions of Balaustion. It should never be
+forgotten that it is a dramatic poem in which Aristophanes is allowed to
+speak for himself at great length, and whatever can be accepted as good
+argument for himself upon his own ground should be set over against the
+sweeping strictures of Balaustion. Indeed it may turn out that Browning
+has, after all, said for him the most exculpatory word of any critic, for
+he has so presented his case as to show that he considers him the outcome
+of the undeveloped phase of morals then existing for which he is hardly
+responsible because the higher light has not yet broken in upon him. This
+is evidenced especially in the strange combination in him of a frank
+belief in a life of the senses which goes along with a puritanical
+reverence for the gods, and a hatred of anything that falls within his own
+definition of vice.
+
+To sum up, if I may again be forgiven for re-expressing an opinion
+elsewhere printed, which states as clearly as I am able to do my
+conviction of where the play stands as criticism, like all dramatic work,
+this poem aims to present the actual spirit of the time in which the
+actors moved upon the stage of life, and to reproduce something of their
+mental and emotional natures. Any criticism of the poets who figure in the
+poem, or of the larger question of the quarrel between tragedy and comedy,
+should be deduced indirectly, as implied in the sympathetic presentation
+of both sides, not based exclusively upon direct expressions of opinion
+on either side. So regarded it would seem that Browning was able to
+appreciate the genius of Aristophanes as well as that of Euripides, but
+that he considered Aristophanes to have value chiefly in relation to his
+age, as the artistic mouthpiece of its long-established usages, while
+Euripides had caught the breath of the future, and was the mirror of the
+prophetic impulses of his age rather than of its dominant civilization.
+
+It is not improbable that Landor's fascinating portrayal of the brilliant
+Aspasia may have had some influence upon Browning's conception of
+Balaustion, upon the intellectual side at least. Alcibiades says that many
+people think her language as pure and elegant as Pericles, and Pericles
+says she was never seen out of temper or forgetful of what argument to
+urge first and most forcibly. When all is said, however, it may be that
+the "halo irised around" Balaustion's head was due, more than to any one
+else, to the influence of the memory of Mrs. Browning, of whom she is made
+to say with a sublime disregard of its anachronism:
+
+  "I know the poetess who graved in gold,
+  Among her glories that shall never fade,
+  This style and title for Euripides,
+  _The Human with his droppings of warm tears_."
+
+After such a study of Greek life as this, wherein every available incident
+in history, every episode in the plays of Aristophanes bearing on the
+subject, every contemporary allusion are all woven together with such
+consummate skill that the very soul and body of the time is imaged forth,
+the classical poems of the other great names of the century seem almost
+like child's play. Landor's poems on Greek subjects sound like imitations
+in inferior material of antiquity. Arnold's are even duller. Swinburne
+tells his Greek tales in an endless flow of rhythmical, musical verse,
+which occasionally rises into the realm of having something to say. Morris
+tells his at equal length in a manner suggestive of Chaucer without
+Chaucer's snap, but where among them all is there such a bit of stinging
+life as in "Pheidippedes" or "Echetlos?"
+
+[Illustration: WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR]
+
+Tennyson has, it is true, written some altogether exquisite verse, upon
+classical themes, and in every case the poems are not descriptive nor
+dramatic, but are dramatic soliloquies, thus approaching in form
+Browning's dramatic idyls. One of the most beautiful of these is "Oenone."
+There we have a mere tradition enlarged upon and the feelings of Oenone
+upon the desertion of Paris expressed with a richness of emotional fervor
+in a setting of appropriate nature imagery which carries us back to the
+idyls of Theocritus. "Ulysses," again gives the psychology of a wanderer
+who has become so habituated to adventures that he is quite incapable of
+settling down with Penelope for the remainder of his life. One cannot
+quite forgive the poet for calling the ever youthful and beautiful
+Penelope, whose hand was sought by so many suitors, and who, although
+twenty years had passed, might still be quite young, an "aged wife." It
+has always seemed to the writer like a wholly unnecessary stab at a very
+beautiful story, and the poem would have been just as effective if
+Ulysses' hunger for lands beyond the sun had not been coupled with any
+scorn of Penelope, but with a feeling of pain that again Fate must take
+him away from her. Aside from this note of bad taste--bad, because it
+shadows a picture of faithfulness, cherished as an almost universal
+possession of humanity--the poem is fine. There is also, though not Greek,
+the remarkable study of Lucretius going mad from the effects of his wife's
+love philter, in which the most fascinating glimpses of his philosophy of
+atoms are caught amid his maniacal wanderings, and, last, the very
+beautiful Demeter and Persephone.
+
+These are as unique in their way as Browning's Greek poems are in theirs,
+standing quite apart from such work as Morris', or Swinburne's, not only
+because of their haunting music, which even Swinburne cannot equal, but
+because of a deeper vein of thought running through them. As far as
+thought is concerned, however, all pale in significance the moment they
+are placed in juxtaposition with any of Browning's classical productions.
+
+Not the least interesting of Browning's classical poems is "Ixion." In his
+treatment of the myth of Ixion he proves himself a true child of the
+Greeks, not that he makes any slavish attempt to reproduce a Greek
+atmosphere as it existed in the lifetime of Greek poetry, but he exercises
+that prerogative which the Greek poets always claimed, of interpreting a
+myth to suit their own ends.
+
+It has become a sort of critical axiom to compare Browning's "Ixion" with
+the "Prometheus" of literature. This is one of those catching analogies
+which lay hold upon the mind, and cannot be shaken off again without
+considerable difficulty. Mr. Arthur Symons first spoke of the resemblance;
+and almost every other critic with the exception of Mr. Nettleship has
+dwelt mainly upon that aspect of the poem which bears out the comparison.
+But why, it might very well be asked, did Browning, if he intended to make
+another Prometheus, choose Ixion for his theme? And the answer is evident,
+because in the story of Ixion he found some quality different from any
+which existed in the story of Prometheus, and which was especially suited
+to the end he had in view.
+
+The kernel of the myth of Prometheus as developed by Æschylus is proud,
+unflinching suffering of punishment, inflicted, not by a god justly angry
+for sin against himself, but by a god sternly mindful of his own
+prerogatives, whose only right is might, and jealous of any interference
+in behalf of the race which he detested--the race of man. Thus Prometheus
+stands out as a hero in Greek mythology, a mediator between man and the
+blind anger of a god of unconditional power; and Prometheus, with an
+equally blind belief in Fate, accepts while he defies the punishment
+inflicted by Zeus. He tacitly acknowledges the right of Zeus to punish
+him, since he confesses his deeds to be sins, but, nevertheless, he would
+do exactly the same thing over again:
+
+                "By my choice, my choice
+  I freely sinned--I will confess my sin--
+  And helping mortals found mine own despair."
+
+On the other hand, Ixion never appears in classic lore as a hero. He has
+been called the "Cain" of Greece, because he was the first, as Pindar
+says, "to introduce to mortal men the murder of kin not unaccompanied by
+cunning." Zeus appears, however, to have shown more leniency to him for
+the crime of killing his father-in-law than he ever did to Prometheus, as
+he not only purified him from murder, but invited him to a seat among the
+gods. But to quote Pindar again, "he found his prosperity too great to
+bear, when with infatuate mind he became enamored of Hera.... Thus his
+conceit drave him to an act of enormous folly, but the man soon suffered
+his deserts, and received an exquisite torture." Ixion, then, in direct
+contrast to Prometheus, stands forth an embodiment of the most detestable
+of sins, perpetrated simply for personal ends. To depict such a man as
+this in an attitude of defiance, and yet to justify his defiance, is a far
+more difficult problem than to justify the already admired heroism of
+Prometheus. It is entirely characteristic of Browning that he should
+choose perhaps the most unprincipled character in the whole range of Greek
+mythology as his hero. He is not content, like Emerson, with simply
+telling us that "in the mud and scum of things there alway, alway
+something sings"; his aim is ever to bring us face to face with reality,
+and to open our ears that we may hear for ourselves this universal song.
+In fine, Browning chose Ixion and not another, because he wanted above all
+things an unquestioned sinner; and the task he set himself was to show the
+use of sin and at the same time exonerate the sinner from the eternal
+consequences of his act.
+
+So mystical is the language of the poem that it is extremely difficult to
+trace behind it the subtle reasoning. Mr. Nettleship has given by far the
+best exposition of the poem, though even he does not seize all its
+suggestiveness.
+
+Ixion, the sinner, suffering eternal torment, questions the justice of
+such torment. The first very important conclusion to which he comes, and
+it is one entirely in accord with science, is that sin is an aberration of
+sense, merely the result of external conditions in which the soul of man
+has no active part. The soul simply dreams, but once fully awakened, it
+would free itself from this bondage of sense if it were allowed to do so.
+Ixion argues that it is Zeus that hath made him and not he himself, and if
+he has sinned it is through the bodily senses which Zeus has conferred
+upon him, and if he were the friendly and all-powerful god which he
+claimed himself to be and which Ixion believed he was, why did he allow
+these distractions of sense to lead him (Ixion) into sin which could only
+be expiated by eternal punishment? Without body there would have been
+nothing to obstruct his soul's rush upon the real; and with one touch of
+pitying power Zeus might have dispersed "this film-work, eye's and ear's."
+It is entirely the fault of Zeus that he had sinned; and having done so
+will external torture make him repent any more who has repented already?
+This is the old, old problem that has taxed the brains of many a
+philosopher and the faith of many a theologian--the reconcilement of the
+existence of evil with an omnipotent God. Then follows a comparison
+between the actions of Zeus, a god, and of Ixion, the human king; and
+Ixion declares could he have known all, as Zeus does, he would have warded
+off evil from his subjects, would have seen that they were trained aright
+from the first--in fact, would not have allowed evil to exist, or failing
+this, could he have seen the heart of the criminals and realized how they
+repented he would have given them a chance to retrieve their past. Ixion
+now realizes that his human ideal is higher than that of Zeus. He had
+imagined him possessed of human qualities, and finds his qualities are
+less than human. What must be the inevitable result of arriving at such a
+conclusion? It means the dethronement of the god, and either a lapse into
+hopeless atheism or the recognition that the conception formed of the god
+was that of the human mind at an earlier stage of understanding. This
+conception becomes crystallized into an anthropomorphic god; but the mind
+of man goes onward on its way to higher heights, and lo! there comes a day
+when the god-ideal of the past is lower than the human ideal of the
+present. It is such a crisis as this that Ixion has arrived at, and his
+faith is equal to the strain. Since Zeus is man's own mind-made god,
+Ixion's tortures must be the natural consequences of his sin, and not the
+arbitrary punishment of a god; and what is Ixion's sin as Browning has
+interpreted the myth?
+
+The sin is that of arrogance. Ixion, a mere man, strives to be on an
+equality with gods. In Lucian's dialogue between Hera and Zeus the stress
+is laid upon the arrogance of Ixion. Jupiter declares that Ixion shall pay
+the "penalty not of his love--for that surely is not so dreadful a
+crime--but of his loud boasting." Browning raises the sin into a rarer
+atmosphere than that of the Greek or Latin. Zeus and Hera may be taken to
+represent the attributes of power and love as conceived by man in
+Divinity; and Ixion, symbolic of man, arrogantly supposes that he is
+capable of putting himself on an equality with Divinity by conceiving the
+entire nature of Divinity, that out of his finite mind he can construct
+the absolute god, and this is the sin, or, better, the aberration of
+sense, which results in the crystallization of his former inadequate
+conceptions into an anthropomorphic god, and causes his own downfall.
+Ixion, now fully aroused to the fact that the god he has been defying is
+but his own miserable conception of God, realizes that the suffering
+caused by this conception of God is the very means through which man
+struggles toward higher ideals: through evil he is brought to a
+recognition of the good; from his agony is bred the rainbow of hope, which
+ever shines above him glorified by the light from a Purity far beyond,
+all-unobstructed. Successive conceptions of God must sink; but man,
+however misled by them, must finally burst through the obstructions of
+sense, freeing his spirit to aspire forever toward the light.
+
+"Ixion," then, is not merely an argument against eternal punishment, nor
+a picture of heroic suffering, though he who will may draw these lessons
+from it, but it is a tremendous symbol of the spiritual development of
+man. Pure in its essence, the spirit learns through the obstructions of
+sense to yearn forever for higher attainment, and this constitutes the
+especial blessedness of man as contrasted with Zeus. He, like the
+Pythagorean Father of Number, is the conditioned one; but man is
+privileged through all æons of time to break through conditions, and thus
+Ixion, triumphant, exclaims:
+
+            "Where light, where light is, aspiring
+  Thither I rise, whilst thou--Zeus, keep the godship and sink."
+
+In these poems, as in other phases of his work, Browning runs the gamut of
+life, of art, and of thought. He has set a new standard in regard to the
+handling of classic material, one which should open the field of classic
+lore afresh to future poets. Instead of trying to ape in more or less
+ineffectual imitations the style and thought of the great masters of
+antiquity, or simply use their mythology as a well-spring of romance to be
+clothed in whatever vagaries of style the individual poet might be able to
+invent, the aim of the future poet should be to reconstruct the life and
+thought of that wonderful civilization. One playwright, at least, has made
+a step in the right direction. I refer to Gilbert Murray, whose classical
+scholarship has thrown so much light upon the vexed questions of
+Browning's attitude toward Euripides, and who, in his "Andromache," has
+written a play, not in classical, but in modern form, which seems to bring
+us more into touch with the life of Homer's day than even Homer himself.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+PROPHETIC VISIONS
+
+
+The division between centuries, though it be an arbitrary one, does
+actually appear to mark fairly definite steps in human development, and
+already there are indications that the twentieth century is taking on a
+character quite distinct from that of the nineteenth. It looks now as if
+it were to be the century of the realization of mankind's wildest dreams
+in the past. Air navigation, the elixir of life, perpetual motion, are
+some of them. About the first no one can now have much skepticism, for if
+airships are not as yet common objects of the everyday sky, they, at
+least, occupy a large share of attention in the magazines, while the
+aviator, a being who did not exist in the last century, is now the hero of
+the hour.
+
+With regard to the second, though no sparkling elixir distilled from some
+rare flower, such as that Septimius Felton sought in Hawthorne's tale, has
+been discovered, the great scientist Metchnikoff has brought to light a
+preserver of youth more in keeping with the science of the day--namely, a
+microbe, possessing power to destroy the poison that produces age. Whether
+perpetual youth is to lead to immortality in the flesh will probably be a
+question for other centuries to discuss, though if Metchnikoff is right
+there is no reason why we should not retain our youthfulness all our lives
+in this century. Add to this, machinery run by the perpetual energy of
+radium--a possibility, if radium can ever be obtained in sufficient
+quantities to supply the needed power to keep modern civilization on its
+ceaseless "go"--and we may picture to ourselves, before the end of the
+twentieth century, youths of ninety starting forth on voyages of thirty
+years in radium ships, which, like the fairy watch of the Princess
+Rossetta, will never go wrong and will never need to be wound up,
+metaphorically speaking. It would almost seem as if some method of
+enlarging the earth, or of arranging voyages to the moon and Mars, would
+be necessary in order to give the new radium machinery sufficient scope
+for its activities. However, at present it seems unlikely that it will
+ever be possible to produce more than half an ounce of radium a year. As
+it would take a ton to run one ship for thirty years, and the expense
+would be something almost incalculable, it is a dream only to be realized
+by the inventing of methods by which the feeble radio-activity known to
+exist in many other substances can be utilized. These methods have not yet
+been invented, but it is a good deal that they have been thought of, for
+what man thinks of he generally seems to have the indomitable energy to
+accomplish.
+
+How such inventions as these, even if very far from attaining success, may
+affect the social and thought ideals of the century it is impossible to
+say. The automobile is said to have brought about a change, not altogether
+beneficial, to the intellectual and artistic growth of society to-day. It
+has taken such powerful possession of the minds of humanity that homes
+have been mortgaged, music and books and pictures have been sacrificed, in
+order that all the money procurable could be put into the machines and
+their running. You hear complaints against the automobile from writers,
+musicians, and artists. The only thing that really has a good sale is the
+automobile. What effect rushing about so constantly at high speed in the
+open air is to have on the brain-power is another interesting problem.
+Perhaps it is this growing subjective delight in motion which is causing
+the development of an artistic taste dependent upon motion as its chief
+element. Motion pictures and dancing appeal to the public with such
+insistence that plays will not hold successfully without an almost
+exaggerated attention to action and dancing, which, whenever it is at all
+possible, make a part of the "show."
+
+The pictures of the new school of painters, the futurists, also reveal the
+craze for motion. They try to put into their pictures the successive and
+decidedly blurred impressions, from the illustrations I have seen, of
+scenes in motion, with a result that is certainly startling and
+interesting, but which it is difficult to believe is beautiful. One has a
+horrible suspicion that all this emphasis upon motion in art is a running
+to seed of the art which appeals to the eye and with a psychological
+content derived principally from sensation. Perhaps in some other century,
+fatuous humanity will like to listen to operas or to plays in a pitch-dark
+theatre. This will represent the going to seed of the art which appeals to
+the ear, and a psychological content derived principally from sentiment.
+
+While movement seems to be the keynote of the century thus far, in its
+everyday life and in its art manifestation, very interesting developments
+are taking place in scientific theories and in philosophy, as well as in
+the world of education and sociology.
+
+In relation to Browning and the other chief poets of the nineteenth
+century, the only aspects of interest are in the region of thought and
+social ideals.
+
+With the exception of Tennyson, no other of the chief poets of the century
+need be considered in this connection with Browning, because, as we have
+seen in a previous chapter, they reflected on the whole the prevalent
+disbelief and doubt of the century which came with the revelations of
+science. Many people have regarded Tennyson as the chief prophet of the
+century. He seems, however, to the present writer to have held an attitude
+which reflected the general tone of religious aspiration in the century,
+rather than one which struck a new note indicating the direction in which
+future religious aspiration might turn.
+
+The conflict in his mind is between doubt and belief. To doubt he has
+often given the most poignant expression, as in his poem called "Despair."
+The story is of a man and his wife who have lost all religious faith
+through the reading of scientific books:
+
+  "Have I crazed myself over their horrible infidel writings? O, yes,
+  For these are the new dark ages, you see, of the popular press,
+  When the bat comes out of his cave, and the owls are whooping at noon,
+  And doubt is the lord of the dunghill, and crows to the sun and the moon,
+  Till the sun and the moon of our science are both of them turned into
+      blood.
+  And hope will have broken her heart, running after a shadow of good;
+  For their knowing and know-nothing books are scatter'd from hand to
+      hand--
+  _We_ have knelt in your know-all chapel, too, looking over the sand."
+
+If the effect of science was bad upon this weak-minded pair, the effect of
+religion as it had been taught them was no better. The absolute
+hopelessness of a blasted faith in all things reaches its climax in the
+following stanzas:
+
+  "And the suns of the limitless universe sparkled and shone in the sky,
+  Flashing with fires as of God, but we knew that their light was a lie--
+  Bright as with deathless hope--but, however they sparkled and shone,
+  The dark little worlds running round them were worlds of woe like our
+      own--
+  No soul in the heaven above, no soul on the earth below,
+  A fiery scroll written over with lamentation and woe.
+
+  "See, we were nursed in the drear nightfold of your fatalist creed,
+  And we turn'd to the growing dawn, we had hoped for a dawn indeed,
+  When the light of a sun that was coming would scatter the ghosts of the
+      past.
+  And the cramping creeds that had madden'd the peoples would vanish at
+      last,
+  And we broke away from the Christ, our human brother and friend,
+  For He spoke, or it seemed that He spoke, of a hell without help,
+      without end.
+
+  "Hoped for a dawn, and it came, but the promise had faded away;
+  We had passed from a cheerless night to the glare of a drearier day;
+  He is only a cloud and a smoke who was once a pillar of fire,
+  The guess of a worm in the dust and the shadow of its desire--
+  Of a worm as it writhes in a world of the weak trodden down by the
+      strong,
+  Of a dying worm in a world, all massacre, murder and wrong."
+
+There are many hopeful passages in Tennyson to offset such deep pessimism
+as is expressed in this one, which, moreover, being a dramatic utterance
+it must be remembered, does not reflect any settled conviction on the
+poet's part, though it shows him liable to moods of the most extreme
+doubt. In "The Ancient Sage" the agnostic spirit of the century is fully
+described, but instead of leading to a mood of despair, the mood is one
+of clinging to faith in the face of all doubt. The sage speaking, says:
+
+  "Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son,
+  Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in,
+  Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,
+  Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one.
+  Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no,
+  Nor yet that thou art mortal--nay, my son,
+  Thou canst not prove that I who speak with thee,
+  Are not thyself in converse with thyself,
+  For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
+  Nor yet disproven. Wherefore thou be wise,
+  Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
+  And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith!
+  She reels not in the storm of warring words,
+  She brightens at the clash of 'Yes' and 'No.'
+  She sees the best that glimmers thro' the worst,
+  She feels the sun is hid but for a night,
+  She spies the summer thro' the winter bud,
+  She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
+  She hears the lark within the songless egg,
+  She finds the fountain where they wail'd Mirage!"
+
+There is nothing here more reassuring than a statement made by the sage,
+based upon no argument, nor revelation, nor intuition--nothing but the
+utilitarian doctrine that it will be wiser to cling to Faith beyond Faith!
+This is a sample of the sort of assurance in the reality of God and of
+immortality which Tennyson was in the habit of giving. In the poem called
+"Vastness" he presents with genuine power a pessimistic view of humanity
+and civilization in all its various phases--all of no use, neither the
+good any more than the bad, "if we all of us end but in being our own
+corpse-coffins at last?" The effect of the dismal atmosphere of the poem
+as a whole is supposed to be dissipated by the last stanza:
+
+  "Peace, let it be! for I loved him, and love him forever: the dead are
+      not dead but alive."
+
+The conviction here of immortality through personal love is born of the
+feeling that his friend whom he has loved must live forever. The note of
+"In Memoriam" is sounded again. Tennyson's philosophy, in a nutshell,
+seems to be that doubts are not so much overcome as quieted by a
+struggling faith in the truths of religion, of which the chief assurance
+lies in the thought of personal love. Not as in Browning, that human love,
+because of its beauty and ecstasy, is a symbol of divine love, but because
+of its wish to be reunited to the one beloved is an earnest of continued
+existence. While Tennyson's poetry is saturated with allusions to the
+science of the century, it seems to be ever the dark side of the doctrine
+of evolution that is dwelt upon by him, while his religion is held to in
+spite of the truths of science, not because the truths of science have
+given him in any way a new revelation of beauty.
+
+Much more emphasis has been laid upon Tennyson's importance as a prophet
+in religious matters than seems to the present writer warranted. He did
+not even keep pace with the thought of the century, though his poetry
+undoubtedly reflected the liberalized theology of the earlier years of the
+second half of the century. As Joseph Jacobs says, "In Memoriam" has been
+to the Broad Church Movement what the "Christian Year" has been to the
+High Church. But where is the Broad Church now? Tennyson was, on the
+whole, adverse to evolution, which has been almost an instinct in English
+speculation for the last quarter of a century. So far as he was the voice
+of his age in speculative matters, he only represented the thought of the
+"sixties."
+
+What vision Tennyson did have came not through intuition or the higher
+reason, but through his psychic power of self-hypnotism. In "The Ancient
+Sage" is a passage describing the sort of trance into which he could
+evidently cause himself to fall:
+
+                          "For more than once when I
+  Sat all alone, revolving in myself
+  The word that is the symbol of myself,
+  The mortal limit of the self was loosed,
+  And passed into the Nameless, as a cloud
+  Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs
+  Were strange, not mine--and yet no shade of doubt,
+  But utter clearness, and thro' loss of self,
+  The gain of such large life as match'd with ours
+  Were sun to spark--unshadowable in words,
+  Themselves but shadows of a shadow world."
+
+Such trances have been of common occurrence in the religious life of the
+world, as Professor James has shown so exhaustively in his great book,
+"Varieties of Religious Experience." And in that book, too, it is
+maintained, against the scientific conclusions, that such ecstasies
+"signify nothing but suggested and imitated hypnoid states, on an
+intellectual basis of superstition, and a corporal one of degeneration and
+hysteria," that mystical states have an actual value as revelations of the
+truth. After passing in review many examples of ecstasy and trance, from
+the occasional experiences of the poets to the constant experiences of the
+mediæval mystics and the Hindu Yogis, he finally comes to the interesting
+conclusion that:
+
+    "This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and
+    the absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we
+    both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our one-ness.
+    This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly
+    altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in
+    Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we
+    find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical
+    utterances an eternal unanimity--which ought to make a critic stop and
+    think, and which brings it about that the mystical classics have, as
+    has been said, neither birthday nor native land."
+
+The witness given religion in Tennyson's mystical trances is then his most
+valuable contribution to the speculative thought of the century, and in a
+sense is prophetic of the twentieth century, because in this century
+revelations attained in this way have been given a credence long denied
+them except in the case of the uneducated and super-emotional, by a man of
+the sound scholarship and good judgment of Professor James.
+
+How fully Browning was a representative of the thought of this time,
+combining as he did an intuitional with a scientific outlook has already
+been shown. Evolution means for him the progress toward the infinite, and
+is full of beauty and promise. The failures in nature and life which fill
+Tennyson with despair furnish to Browning's mind a proof of the existence
+of the absolute, or a somewhere beyond, where things will be righted.
+Observation shows him everywhere in the universe the existence of power
+and mystery. The mystery is either that of the incomprehensibleness of
+causes, or is emphasized in the existence of evil. The first leads to awe
+and wonder, and is a constant spur to mankind to seek further knowledge,
+but the poet insists that the knowledge so accumulated is not actual gain,
+but only a means to gain in so far as it keeps bringing home to the human
+mind the fact of its own inadequacy in the discovery of truth. The
+existence of evil leads to the constant effort to overcome it, and to
+sympathy and pity, and as the failure of knowledge proves a future of
+truth to be won, so the failure of mankind to attain perfection in moral
+action proves a future of goodness to be realized. All this may be found
+either explicitly or implied in the synthetic philosophy of Herbert
+Spencer, whose fundamental principles, despite the fire of criticism to
+which he has been subjected from all sides--science, religion,
+metaphysics, each of which felt it could not claim him exclusively as its
+own, yet resenting his inclusion of the other two--are now, in the first
+decade of the twentieth century, receiving the fullest recognition by such
+masters of the history of nineteenth-century thought as Theodore Merz and
+Émile Boutroux.
+
+People often forget that while Spencer spent his life upon the knowledge
+or scientific side of human experience, he frequently asserted that there
+was in the human consciousness an intuition of the absolute which was the
+only certain knowledge possessed by man. Here again Browning was at one
+with Spencer. Discussing the problem of a future life in "La Saisiaz," he
+declares that God and the soul are the only facts of which he is
+absolutely certain:
+
+  "I have questioned and am answered. Question, answer presuppose
+  Two points: that the thing itself which questions, answers--_is_, it
+      knows;
+  As it also knows the thing perceived outside itself--a force
+  Actual ere its own beginning, operative through its course,
+  Unaffected by its end--that this thing likewise needs must be;
+  Call this--God, then, call that--soul, and both--the only facts for me.
+  Prove them facts? That they o'erpass my power of proving, proves them
+      such."
+
+To this scientific and metaphysical side Browning adds, as has also
+already been pointed out, a mystical side based upon feeling. His
+revelations of divinity do not come by means of self-induced trances, as
+Tennyson's seem to have come, but through the mystery of feeling. This
+mystical state seems to have been his habitual one, if we may judge by its
+prominence in his poetry. He occasionally descends to the realm of reason,
+as he has in "La Saisiaz," but the true plane of his existence is up among
+the exaltations of aspiration and love. His cosmic sense is a sense of God
+as Love, and is the quality most characteristic of the man. It is like,
+though perhaps not identical with, the mysticism of Whitman, which seems
+to have been an habitual state. He writes: "There is, apart from mere
+intellect, in the make-up of every superior human identity, a wondrous
+something that realizes without argument, frequently without what is
+called education (though I think it the goal and apex of all education
+deserving the name), an intuition of the absolute balance, in time and
+space, of the whole of this multifariousness, this revel of fools, and
+incredible make-believe and general unsettledness we call _the world_; a
+soul-sight of that divine clue and unseen thread which holds the whole
+congeries of things, all history and time, and all events, however
+trivial, however momentous, like a leashed dog in the hand of the
+hunter."
+
+This mystic mood of Browning's which underlies his whole work--even a work
+like "The Ring and the Book," where evil in various forms is rampant and
+seems for the time being to conquer--is nowhere more fully, and at the
+same time more concisely, expressed than in his poem "Reverie," one of his
+last, which ends with a full revelation of this mystical feeling, from
+which the less inspired reasoning of "La Saisiaz" is a descent:
+
+  "Even as the world its life,
+      So have I lived my own--
+  Power seen with Love at strife,
+      That sure, this dimly shown--
+  Good rare and evil rife
+
+  "Whereof the effect be--faith
+      That, some far day, were found
+  Ripeness in things now rathe,
+      Wrong righted, each chain unbound,
+  Renewal born out of scathe.
+
+  "Why faith--but to lift the load,
+      To leaven the lump, where lies
+  Mind prostrate through knowledge owed
+      To the loveless Power it tries
+  To withstand, how vain! In flowed
+
+  "Ever resistless fact:
+      No more than the passive clay
+  Disputes the potter's act,
+      Could the whelmed mind disobey
+  Knowledge the cataract.
+
+  "But, perfect in every part,
+      Has the potter's moulded shape,
+  Leap of man's quickened heart,
+      Throe of his thought's escape,
+  Stings of his soul which dart,
+
+  "Through the barrier of flesh, till keen
+      She climbs from the calm and clear,
+  Through turbidity all between
+      From the known to the unknown here,
+  Heaven's 'Shall be' from Earth's 'Has been'?
+
+  "Then life is--to wake not sleep,
+      Rise and not rest, but press
+  From earth's level where blindly creep
+      Things perfected more or less,
+  To the heaven's height, far and steep,
+
+  "Where, amid what strifes and storms
+      May wait the adventurous quest,
+  Power is Love--transports, transforms,
+      Who aspired from worst to best,
+  Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms!
+
+  "I have faith such end shall be:
+      From the first, Power was--I knew.
+  Life has made clear to me
+      That, strive but for closer view,
+  Love were as plain to see.
+
+  "When see? When there dawns a day,
+      If not on the homely earth,
+  Then yonder, worlds away,
+      Where the strange and new have birth
+  And Power comes full in play."
+
+Browning has, far more than Tennyson, put religious speculation upon a
+basis where it may stand irrespective of a belief in the revelations of
+historical Christianity. For the central doctrine of Christianity he had
+so profound a reverence that he recurs to it again and again in his
+poetry, and at times his feeling seems to carry him to the verge of
+orthodox belief. So near does he come to it that many religious critics
+have been convinced that he might be claimed as a Christian in the
+orthodox sense of the word.
+
+A more careful reading, however, of such poems as "The Death in the
+Desert," and "Christmas Eve and Easter Day," upon which rest principally
+the claim of the poet's orthodoxy, will reveal that no certain assertion
+of a belief in supernaturalism is made, even though the poems are dramatic
+and it might be made without necessarily expressing the feeling of the
+poet. What Browning felt was that in historical Christianity the highest
+symbol of divine love had been reached. Though he may at times have had
+moods in which he would fain have believed true an ideal which held for
+him great beauty, his worth for his age was in saving religion, _not_ upon
+a basis of faith, but upon the ground of logical arguments deduced from
+the failure of knowledge, of his personal intuition of God and his
+mystical vision in regard to the nature of God.
+
+So complete a synthesis is this that only in the present century is its
+full purport likely to be realized. The thought of the century is showing
+everywhere a strong reaction away from materialism and toward religious
+thought.
+
+Even in the latest stronghold of science, psychology, as we have already
+seen, there is no formula which will explain the existence of
+individuality. While the scientists themselves plod on, often quite
+unconscious that they are not dealing with ultimates, the thinkers are no
+longer satisfied with a philosophy of materialism, and once more it is
+being recognized that the province of philosophy is to give us God, the
+soul and immortality.
+
+It is especially interesting in this connection to observe that Germany,
+the land of destructive biblical criticism, which Browning before the
+middle of the century handled with the consummate skill characteristic of
+him, by accepting its historical conclusions while conserving the spirit
+of Christianity, has now in the person of Professor Rudolf Eucken done an
+almost similar thing. Like Browning, he is a strong individualist and
+believes that the development of the soul is the one thing of supreme
+moment. "There is a spontaneous springing up of the individual spiritual
+life," he writes, "only within the soul of the individual. All social and
+all historical life that does not unceasingly draw from this source falls
+irrecoverably into a state of stagnation and desolation. The individual
+can never be reduced to the position of a mere member of society, of a
+church, of a state; notwithstanding all external subordination, he must
+assert an inner superiority; each spiritual individual is more than the
+whole external world."
+
+[Illustration: BROWNING AT 77 (1889)]
+
+He calls his system "activism," which merely seems to be another way of
+saying that the soul-life is one of aspiration toward moral ideals and the
+will to carry them out. Such a life, he thinks, demands a new world and a
+new character in man, and is entirely at variance with nature. "Our whole
+life is an indefatigable seeking and pressing forward. In
+self-consciousness the framework is given which has to be filled; in it we
+have acquired only the basis upon which the superstructure has to be
+raised. We have to find experience in life itself to reveal something new,
+to develop life, to increase its range and depth. The endeavor to advance
+in spirituality, to win through struggle, is the soul of the life of the
+individual and the work of universal history." Readers of Browning will
+certainly not feel that there is anything new in this.
+
+In so far, however, as he finds the spiritual life at variance with nature
+he parts company with Browning, showing himself to be under the influence
+of the dualism of the past which regarded matter and spirit as
+antagonistic. In Browning's view, matter and spirit are the two aspects of
+God, in the one, power being manifested; in the other, love.
+
+It follows naturally from this, that Eucken does not think of evil as a
+means by which good is developed. He prefers to regard it as unexplained,
+and forever with us to be overcome. Its reduction to a means of realizing
+the good leads, he thinks, "to a weakening which threatens to transform
+the mighty world-struggle into an artistic arrangement of things and into
+an effeminate play, and which takes away that bitterness from evil without
+which there is no strenuousness in the struggle and no vitality in life.
+Thus it remains true that religion does not so much explain as presuppose
+evil." An attempt to explain evil, he says, belongs to speculation rather
+than to religion. That he has an inkling of the region to which
+speculation might lead him is shown when it is realized, that upon his
+explanation, as one critic of him has said, it might be possible to find
+"some reconciliation in the fact that this world with its negations had
+awakened the spiritual life to its absolute affirmation, which could,
+therefore, not be in absolute opposition."
+
+In leaving aside speculation and confining himself to what he considers
+the religious aspects of life, he no doubt strengthens himself as a leader
+of those whose speculative powers have not yet been developed, or who can
+put one side of the mind to sleep and accept with the other half-truths.
+The more developed mind, however, will prefer Browning's greater
+inclusiveness. To possess a complete view of life, man must live his own
+life as a human being struggling to overcome the evil, at the same time
+keeping in mind the fact that evil is in a sense the raw material provided
+by God, or the Absolute, or whatever name one chooses to give to the
+all-powerful and all-loving, from which the active soul of man is to
+derive a richness of beauty and harmony of development not otherwise
+possible. Eucken's attitude toward Jesus is summed up in a way which
+reminds one strongly of the position taken in the comment made at the end
+of "The Death in the Desert." He writes: "The position of the believer in
+the universal Christian Church is grounded upon a relation to God whose
+uniqueness emerges from the essential divinity of Jesus; only on this
+supposition can the personality of Christ stand as the unconditional Lord
+and Master to whom the ages must do homage. And while the person of Jesus
+retains a wonderful majesty apart from dogma, its greatness is confined to
+the realm of humanity, and whatever of new and divine life it brings to us
+must be potential and capable of realization in us all. We therefore see
+no more in this figure the normative and universally valid type of all
+human life, but merely an incomparable individuality which cannot be
+directly imitated. At any rate the figure of Jesus, thus understood in all
+its height and pure humanity, can no longer be an object of faith and
+divine honor. All attempts to take shelter in a mediating position are
+shattered against a relentless either--or. Between man and God there is no
+intermediate form of being for us, for we cannot sink back into the
+ancient cult of heroes. If Jesus, therefore, is not God, if Christ is not
+the second person in the Trinity, then he is a man; not a man like any
+average man among ourselves, but still man. We can therefore honor him as
+a leader, a hero, a martyr, but we cannot directly bind ourselves to him
+or root ourselves in him; we cannot submit to him unconditionally. Still
+less can we make him the centre of a cult. To do so from our point of view
+would be nothing else than an intolerable deification of a human being."
+The comment at the end of "The Death in the Desert" puts a similar
+question, and answers, "Call Christ, then, the illimitable God, Or Lost!"
+But the final word which casts a light back upon the previous conclusion
+is "But, 'twas Cerinthus that is lost"--the man, in other words, who held
+the heresy that the Christ part only resided in Jesus, who was merely
+human, and that the divine part was not crucified, having flown away
+before. Thus it is implied that neither those who believe Jesus divine,
+nor those who believe him human, are lost, but those who try as Cerinthus
+did to make a compromise. The same note is struck in "Christmas Eve," and
+now Professor Eucken takes an exactly similar ground in regard to any sort
+of compromise, coming out boldly, however, as Browning does not in this
+poem, though he makes no strong argument against it--in the acceptance of
+Christ as human. Browning's own attitude is expressed as clearly as it is
+anywhere in his work in the epilogue to "Dramatis Personæ," in which the
+conclusion is entirely in sympathy with that of Eucken:
+
+  "When you see what I tell you--nature dance
+  About each man of us, retire, advance,
+  As though the pageant's end were to enhance
+
+  "His worth, and--once the life, his product gained--
+  Roll away elsewhere, keep the strife sustained,
+  And show thus real, a thing the North but feigned--
+
+  "When you acknowledge that one world could do
+  All the diverse work, old yet ever new,
+  Divide us, each from other, me from you--
+
+  "Why, where's the need of Temple, when the walls
+  O' the world are that? What use of swells and falls
+  From Levites' choir, Priests' cries, and trumpet calls?
+
+  "That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
+  Or decomposes but to recompose,
+  Become my universe that feels and knows."
+
+The hold which the philosophy of Eucken seems to have taken upon the minds
+of many people all over the world shows that it must have great elements
+of strength. That there is a partial resemblance between his thought,
+which belongs to the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the
+twentieth century, and Browning's is certain, but the fact remains that
+the poet made a synthesis of the elements which must go to the forming of
+any complete religious conceptions of the future so far in advance of his
+own century that even Eucken is in some respects behind it.
+
+Another interesting instance of Browning's presenting a line of reasoning
+which resembles very strongly one phase of present-day philosophy is to be
+found in "Bishop Blougram's Apology." The worldly Bishop gives voice to
+good pragmatic doctrine, which in a nutshell is, "believe in, or rather
+follow, that ideal which will be of the most use to you, and if it turns
+out not to be successful, then try another one." The poet declares that
+Blougram said good things but called them by wrong names. If the ideal is
+a high one there is no great danger in such reasoning, but it can very
+easily be turned into sophistical arguments for an ideal of living to
+thoroughly selfish ends, as Blougram actually did. The poem might almost
+be taken as a prophetic criticism of the weak aspects of pragmatism.
+
+The belief in immortality which pervades Browning's work often comes out
+in a form suggesting the idea of reincarnation. His future for the human
+soul is not a heaven of bliss, but life in other worlds full of activity
+and aspiration. This note is struck in "Paracelsus," where life's destiny
+is described to be the climbing of pleasure's heights forever the seeking
+of a flying point of bliss remote. In his last volume the idea is more
+fully brought out in "Rephan." In this it is held that a state of perfect
+bliss might grow monotonous, and that a preferable state would be to
+aspire, yet never attain, to the object aimed at. The transmigration is
+from "Rephan," where all was merged in a neutral Best to Earth, where the
+soul which had been stagnating would have an opportunity to strive, not
+rest. The most beautiful expression, however, of the idea of a future of
+many lives is found in "One Word More":
+
+  "So it seems: I stand on my attainment.
+  This of verse, alone, one life allows me;
+  Verse and nothing else have I to give you.
+  Other heights in other lives, God willing:
+  All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!"
+
+Though the theory of reincarnation is so ancient a one, and one entirely
+discredited by Christianity, Browning was again expressing an ideal which
+was to be revived in our own day. Oriental thought has made it almost a
+commonplace of talk. Many people doubtless speak of what they mean to do
+in their next incarnation without having the thought very deeply imbedded
+in their consciousness, yet the mere fact that one hears the remark so
+often proves what a hold the theory has on the imagination of mankind. As
+Browning gives it in "One Word More," the successive incarnations take one
+on to higher heights--"other lives in other worlds." Thus regarded, it is
+the final outcome of evolution and progress, a process to be carried
+forward in other worlds than our own, and has no degrading suggestion of a
+degenerating, because of sin, into lower forms of existence. The movement
+is always upward. Thus it has been effected by the idea that progress is
+the law of life, and that evolution means, on the whole, progress.
+
+Again, in the liberality of his social ideals, combined with an intensest
+belief in the supremacy of genuine love, he was the forerunner of Ibsen,
+who, the world is beginning to discover, was not a subverter of high moral
+ideals, as it had thought, but a prophet of the new day, when to be untrue
+to the highest ideal of love will be accounted the greatest crime of one
+human being against another. From "The Doll's House" to "When We That Are
+Dead Awaken" the same lesson is taught. Few people realize that this is
+the keynote of Browning's teaching, or would be ready to regard him as a
+prophet of an ideal of love which shall come to be seen as the true one
+after the science of eugenics, the latest of the exact sciences, has found
+itself as powerless as all other sciences have been to touch the reality
+of life, because amid all the mysteries of the universe none is greater
+than the spiritual mystery of love. Among writers who are to-day
+recognizing a part of the truth, at least, is Ellen Key, but neither she
+nor Ibsen has insisted in the way that Browning has upon the mystical
+source of human love. That Browning is the poet who has given the world
+the utmost certainty of God, the soul and immortality, and the most
+inspiring ideals of human love, will be more completely recognized in the
+future. As time goes on he will emerge above the tumultuous intellectual
+life of the present, which, with its enormous increase of knowledge of
+phenomena, bringing with it a fairly titanic mastery of the forces of
+nature, and its generation of multitudes of ideas upon every conceivable
+subject, many of them trite, many of them puerile, and some of them no
+doubt of genuine value, obscures for the time being the greatness of any
+one voice. A little later, when the winnowing of ideas shall come,
+Browning will be recognized as one of the greatest men of his own age or
+any age--a man combining knowledge, wisdom, aspiration, and vision to a
+marvelous degree. He belongs to the master-order of poets, who write some
+things which will pass into the popular knowledge of the day, but whose
+serious achievements will be read and studied by the cultured and
+scholarly of all time. No students of Greek literature will feel that they
+can omit from their reading his Greek poems, no students of sociology will
+feel that they can omit from their reading "The Ring and the Book." Lovers
+of the drama must ever respond to the beauty of "The Blot in the
+'Scutcheon" and "Pippa Passes." Even the student of verse technique will
+not be able to leave Browning out of account, and making allowances for
+the fact that the individuality of his style sometimes overasserts itself,
+he will realize more and more its freshness and its vividness, its power
+of suggestion, and its depths of emotional fervor. When the romanticism of
+a Keats or a Shelley has completely worked itself out in musical
+efflorescence; from which all thought-content has disappeared, there may
+grow up a school of poets which shall, without direct imitation, develop
+poetry along the lines of vigor and strength in form, and which shall have
+for its content a tremendous sense of the worth of humanity and an
+unshakable belief in the splendor of its destiny. _Virilists_ might well
+be the name of this future school of poets who would hark back to Browning
+as their inspiration, and a most pleasant contrast would they be to the
+sentimental namby-pambyism which passes muster as poetry in much of the
+work of to-day.
+
+In closing this volume which has been inspired by a deep sense of the
+abiding greatness of Robert Browning, it has been my desire to put on
+record in some way my personal indebtedness to his poetry as an
+inspiration not only to high thinking and living, but as a genuine
+revelation to me of the rare possibilities in poetic art, for I may almost
+say that Browning was my first poet, and through him, strange as it may
+seem, I came to an appreciation of all other poets. His poetry,
+fortunately for me an early influence in my life, awakened my, until then,
+dormant faculty for poetic appreciation. I owe him, therefore, a double
+debt of gratitude: Not only has he given me the joy of knowing his own
+great work, but through him I have entered the land of all poésie, led as
+I truly think by his sympathy with the scientific dispensation into which
+I was born. His thought has always seemed so naturally akin to my own
+that it has never seemed to me obscure. Finding such thoughts expressed
+through the medium of great poetic genius, the beauty of poetic expression
+was brought home to me as it never had been before, and hence the poetic
+expression of all thought became a deep pleasure to me.
+
+So much interpretation and criticism of Browning has been given to the
+world during the last twenty years, that further work in that direction
+seems hardly necessary for the present. There will for many a day to come
+be those who feel him to be among the greatest poets the world has seen,
+and those who find much more to blame in his work than to praise.
+
+I have tried to give a few suggestions in regard to what Robert Browning
+actually was in relation to his time. The nineteenth century was so
+remarkable a one in the complexity of its growth, both in practical
+affairs and in intellectual developments, that it has been possible in the
+space of one volume to touch only upon the most important aspects under
+each division, and to try to show what measure of influence important
+movements had in the molding of the poet's genius.
+
+Though in the nature of the case the treatment could not be exhaustive, I
+hope to have opened out a sufficient number of pathways into the
+fascinating vistas of the nineteenth century in its relation to Browning
+to inspire others to make further excursions for themselves; and, above
+all, I hope I may have added at least one stone to the cairn which many,
+past and to come, are building to his fame.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] The influence of the "Prometheus Unbound" upon the conception of
+Aprile's character was first brought forward by the writer in a paper read
+before the Boston Browning Society, March 15, 1910, a typewritten copy of
+which was placed in the Browning alcove in the Boston Public Library. In
+the "Life of Browning," published the same year and not read by the writer
+until recently, Mr. Hall Griffin touches upon the same thought in the
+following words: "From some elements in the myth of Prometheus Browning
+unmistakably evolved the conception of his Aprile as not only the lover
+and the poet but as the potential sculptor, painter, orator, and
+musician."
+
+[2] See the author's "Browning's England."
+
+[3] See Introduction to "Ring and Book"--Camberwell Browning.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Browning and His Century, by Helen Archibald Clarke
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      Browning And His Century, by Helen Archibald Clarke&mdash;A Project Gutenberg eBook
+    </title>
+
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Browning and His Century, by Helen Archibald Clarke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Browning and His Century
+
+Author: Helen Archibald Clarke
+
+Release Date: February 14, 2012 [EBook #38874]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY ***
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+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive.)
+
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+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1><small>BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY</small></h1>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="large">BY THE SAME AUTHOR</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">BROWNING&#8217;S ITALY<br />
+BROWNING&#8217;S ENGLAND<br />
+A GUIDE TO MYTHOLOGY<br />
+ANCIENT MYTHS IN MODERN POETS<br />
+LONGFELLOW&#8217;S COUNTRY<br />
+HAWTHORNE&#8217;S COUNTRY<br />
+THE POETS&#8217; NEW ENGLAND</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a></p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 344px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/img01.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Browning at 23 (London 1835)</span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">Browning and His<br />
+Century</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><small>BY</small><br />
+HELEN ARCHIBALD CLARKE<br />
+<small>Author of &#8220;<i>Browning&#8217;s Italy</i>,&#8221; &#8220;<i>Browning&#8217;s England</i>,&#8221; etc.</small></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img02.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">ILLUSTRATED<br />
+FROM<br />
+PHOTOGRAPHS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Garden City</span><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span><span class="smcap">New York</span><br />
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br />
+1912</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><i>Copyright, 1912, by</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Doubleday, Page &amp; Co.</span><br /><br />
+<i>All rights reserved, including that of<br />
+translation into foreign languages,<br />
+including the Scandinavian</i></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">To<br />
+THE BOSTON BROWNING SOCIETY<br />
+IN COMMEMORATION OF THE<br />
+BROWNING CENTENARY&mdash;1812-1912</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+<p class="title">CONTENTS</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#I">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><span class="smcap">The Battle of Mind and Spirit</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#II">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><span class="smcap">The Century&#8217;s End: Promise of Peace</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#III">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><span class="smcap">Political Tendencies</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#IV">CHAPTER IV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><span class="smcap">Social Ideals</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_174">174</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#V">CHAPTER V</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><span class="smcap">Art Shibboleths</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#VI">CHAPTER VI</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><span class="smcap">Classic Survivals</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#VII">CHAPTER VII</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><span class="smcap">Prophetic Visions</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_342">342</a></td></tr></table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+<p class="title">ILLUSTRATIONS</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>Browning at 23 (London 1835) &nbsp; &nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#frontis"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>FACING PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Paracelsus</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_38">38</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Herbert Spencer</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_95">94</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>David Strauss</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_114">112</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Cardinal Wiseman</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_121">120</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>William Ewart Gladstone</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>William Morris</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_197">196</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>John Burns</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_208">208</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Alfred Tennyson</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_250">250</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>A. C. Swinburne</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_261">260</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Dante Gabriel Rossetti</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_268">266</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>George Meredith</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_274">272</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Euripides</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_297">296</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Aristophanes</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_307">306</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Walter Savage Landor</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_331">330</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Browning at 77 (1889)</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_361">360</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PROLOGUE</h2>
+
+<p class="center">TO ROBERT BROWNING</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&#8220;Say not we know but rather that we love,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And so we know enough.&#8221; Thus deeply spoke</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Sage; and in men&#8217;s stunted hearts awoke</span><br />
+A haunting fear, for fain are they to prove<br />
+Their life, their God, with yeas and nays that move<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The mind&#8217;s uncertain flow. Then fierce outbroke,&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Knowledge, the child of pain shall we revoke?</span><br />
+The guide wherewith men climb to things above?<br />
+Nay, calm your fears! &#8217;Tis but the mere mind&#8217;s knowing,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The soul&#8217;s alone the poet worthy deeming.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Let mind up-build its entities of seeming</span><br />
+With toil and tears! The toil is but for showing<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How much there lacks of truth. But &#8217;tis no dreaming</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When sky throbs back to heart, with God&#8217;s love beaming.</span></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+<p class="title">THE BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">During</span> the nineteenth century, which has already receded far enough into
+the perspective of the past for us to be able to take a comprehensive view
+of it, the advance guard of the human race found itself in a position
+entirely different from that ever before occupied by it. Through the
+knowledge of cosmic, animal, and social evolution gradually accumulated by
+the laborious and careful studies of special students in every department
+of historical research and scientific experiment, a broader and higher
+state of self-consciousness was attained. Mankind, on its most perceptive
+plane, no longer pinned its faith to inherited traditions, whether of
+religion, art, or morals. Every conceivable fact and every conceivable
+myth was to be tested in the laboratory of the intellect, even the
+intellect itself was to undergo dissection, with the result that, once for
+all, it has been decided what particular range of human knowledge lies
+within the reach of mental<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> perception, and what particular range of human
+knowledge can be grasped only through spiritual perception.</p>
+
+<p>Such a momentous decision as this in the history of thought has not been
+reached without a long and protracted struggle extending back into the
+early days of Christianity, nor, it may be said, is the harmony as yet
+complete, for there are to-day, and perhaps always will be, human beings
+whose consciousness is not fully orbed and who either seek their point of
+equilibrium too entirely in the plane of mind or too entirely in the plane
+of spirit.</p>
+
+<p>In the early days, before Christianity came to bring its &#8220;sword upon
+earth,&#8221; there seems to have been little or no consciousness of such a
+struggle. The ancient Hindu, observing Nature and meditating upon the
+universe, arrived intuitively at a perception of life and its processes
+wonderfully akin to that later experimentally proved by the nineteenth
+century scientist, nor did he have a suspicion that such truth was in any
+way antagonistic to religious truth. On the contrary, he considered that,
+by it, the beauty and mystery of religion was immeasurably enhanced, and,
+letting his imagination play upon his intuition, he brought forth a theory
+of spiritual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> evolution in which the world to-day is bound to recognize
+many elements of beauty and power necessary to any complete conception of
+religion in the future.</p>
+
+<p>Even the Babylonians made their guesses at an evolutionary theory of the
+universe. Greek philosophy, later, was permeated with the idea, it having
+been derived by them perhaps from the Chaldeans through the Ph&oelig;nicians,
+or if the theories of Aryan migrations be correct, perhaps through
+inheritance from a remote Aryan ancestry.</p>
+
+<p>When Christian thought gained its hold upon the world, the account of
+creation given in Genesis became so thoroughly impressed upon the minds of
+men that it was regarded as the orthodox view, rooted in divine
+revelation, and to question it was to incur the danger of being called an
+atheist, with its possibly uncomfortable consequences of being martyred.</p>
+
+<p>Strangely enough, the early Church adopted into its fold many pagan
+superstitions, such as a belief in witchcraft and in signs and wonders, as
+well as some myths, but this great truth upon which the pagan mind had
+stumbled, it would have none of.</p>
+
+<p>These two circumstances&mdash;the adoption on the part of Christianity of pagan
+superstitions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> and its utter repudiation of the pagan guesses upon
+evolution, carrying within it the germs of truth, later to be unearthed by
+scientific research&mdash;furnished exactly the right conditions for the
+throwing down of the gauntlet between the mind and the spirit. The former,
+following intellectual guidance, found itself coming more and more into
+antagonism with the spirit, not yet freed from the trammels of
+imagination. The latter, guided by imagination, continued to exercise a
+mythop&oelig;ic faculty, which not only brought it more and more into
+antagonism with the mind, but set up within its own realm an internecine
+warfare which has blackened the pages of religious history with crimes and
+martyrdoms so terrible as to force the conviction that the true devil in
+antagonism to spiritual development has been the imagination of mankind,
+masquerading as verity, and not yet having found its true function in art.</p>
+
+<p>Regarded from the point of view of the student of intellectual
+development, this conflict of two thousand years has the fascination of a
+great drama of which the protagonist is the mind struggling to free the
+spirit from its subjection to the evil aspects of the imagination. Great
+thinkers in the field of science, philosophy, and religion are the
+<i>dramatis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> person&aelig;</i>, and in the onward rush of this world-drama the
+sufferings of those who have fallen by the way seem insignificant.</p>
+
+<p>But when the student of history takes his more intimate survey of the
+purely human aspects of the struggle, heartrending, indeed, become the
+tragedies resulting from the exercise of human bigotry and stupidity.</p>
+
+<p>Indignation and sorrow take possession of us when we think upon such a
+spectacle as that of Roger Bacon, making ready to perform a few scientific
+experiments before a small audience at Oxford, confronted by an uproar in
+which monks, fellows, and students rushed about, their garments streaming
+in the wind, crying out, &#8220;Down with the magician!&#8221; And this was only the
+beginning of a persecution which ended in his teaching being solemnly
+condemned by the authorities of the Franciscan order and himself thrown
+for fourteen years into prison, whence he issued an old and broken man of
+eighty.</p>
+
+<p>More barbarous still was the treatment of Giordano Bruno, a strange sort
+of man who developed his philosophy in about twenty-five works, some
+prose, some poetry, some dialogues, some comedies, with such enticing
+titles as &#8220;The Book of the Great Key,&#8221; &#8220;The Explanation of the Thirty
+Seals,&#8221; &#8220;The <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast,&#8221; &#8220;The Threefold
+Minimum,&#8221; &#8220;The Composition of Images,&#8221; &#8220;The Innumerable, the Immense and
+the Unfigurable.&#8221; His utterances were vague, especially to the intellects
+of his time, yet not so vague that theology, whether Catholic or
+Calvinistic, did not at once take fright.</p>
+
+<p>He held that the investigation of nature in the unbiased light of reason
+is our only guide to truth. He rejected antiquity, tradition, faith, and
+authority; he exclaimed, &#8220;Let us begin by doubt. Let us doubt till we
+know.&#8221; Acting upon these principles, he began to unfold again that current
+of Greek thought which the system imposed by the Church had intercepted
+for more than a thousand years, and arrived at a conception of evolution
+prefiguring the modern theories.</p>
+
+<p>He conceived the law of the universe to be unceasing change. &#8220;Each
+individual,&#8221; he declared, &#8220;is the resultant of innumerable individuals;
+each species is the starting point for the next.&#8221; Furthermore, he
+maintained that the perfecting of the individual soul is the aim of all
+progress.</p>
+
+<p>Tenets so opposite to the orthodox view of special creation and the fall
+of man could not be allowed to go unchallenged. It is to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> remembered
+that he was a priest in holy orders in the Convent of St. Dominic, and in
+the year 1576 he was accused by the Provincial of his order of heresy on
+one hundred and thirty counts. He did not await his trial, but fled to
+Rome, thence to northern Italy, and became for some years a wanderer. He
+was imprisoned at Geneva; at Toulouse he spent a year lecturing on
+Aristotle; in Paris, two years as professor extraordinary in the Sorbonne;
+three years in London, where he became the friend of Sir Philip Sidney,
+and influenced the philosophy of both Bacon and Shakespeare. Oxford,
+however, was unfriendly to his teachings and he was obliged to flee from
+England also. Then he wandered for five years from city to city in
+Germany&mdash;at one time warned to leave the town, at another excommunicated,
+at another not even permitted to lodge within the gates. Finally, he
+accepted the invitation of a noble Venetian, Zuane Mocenigo, to visit
+Venice and teach him the higher and secret learning. The two men soon
+quarreled, and Bruno was betrayed by the count into the hands of the
+Inquisition. He was convicted of heresy in Venice and delivered to the
+Inquisition in Rome. He spent seven years in its dungeons, and was again
+tried and convicted, and called<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> upon to recant, which he stoutly refused
+to do. Sentence of death was then passed upon him and he was burned at the
+stake on February 17, 1600, on the Campo de&#8217; Fiori, where there now stands
+a statue erected by Progressive Italy in his honor.</p>
+
+<p>His last words were, &#8220;I die a martyr, and willingly.&#8221; Then they cast his
+ashes into the Tiber and placed his name among the accused on the rolls of
+the Church. And there it probably still remains, for no longer ago than
+1889, when his statue was unveiled on the ninth of June, on the site of
+his burning, in full view of the Vatican, Pope Leo XIII, it is said,
+refused food and spent hours in an agony of prayer at the foot of the
+statue of St. Peter. Catholic, and even Protestant, denunciation of Bruno
+at this time showed that the smoke from this particular battle in the war
+of mind with spirit was still far from being laid.</p>
+
+<p>With the fate of Giordano Bruno still fresh in his mind, Galileo succumbed
+to the demands of the Inquisition and recanted, saying that he no longer
+believed what he, himself, with his telescope had proved to be true.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner and on my
+knees, and before your Eminences, having before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> my eyes the Holy
+Gospel, which I touch with my hands, abjure, curse, and detest the
+error and the heresy of the movement of the earth.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>If this recantation had brought any comfort or peace into his life it
+might have been hard to forgive Galileo&#8217;s perjury of himself. His
+persecution, however, continued to the end. He was exiled from his family
+and friends, and, even when he had become blind and wasted by sorrow and
+disease, he was still closely watched lest he might utter the awful heresy
+that the earth moved.</p>
+
+<p>A hundred years later than this, when Buffon attempted to teach the simple
+truths of geology, he was deposed from his high position and made to
+recant by the theological faculty of the Sorbonne. The man who promulgated
+geological principles, as firmly established to-day as that of the
+rotation of the earth upon its axis, was forced to write: &#8220;I declare that
+I had no intention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I believe
+most firmly all therein related about the creation, both as to order of
+time and matter of fact. I abandon everything in my book respecting the
+formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary to the
+narrative of Moses.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Such are the more heinous examples of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> the persecution of the men who
+discovered the truths of science. To these should be added the wholesale
+persecution of witches and magicians, for unusual knowledge of any sort
+ran the chance of being regarded as contrary to biblical teaching and of
+being attributed to the machinations of the Prince of Darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Every new step made in the direction of scientific truth has had thus to
+face the most determined opposition. Persecution by torture and death died
+out, but up to the nineteenth century, and well on through it,
+denunciation, excommunication, suppression, the loss of honorable
+positions have all been used as weapons by church or university in the
+attempt to stamp out whatever it considered dangerous and subverting
+doctrines of science.</p>
+
+<p>The decisive battle was not to be inaugurated until the latter half of the
+nineteenth century, with the advent in the field of such names in science
+as Spencer, Darwin, Tyndall and Huxley, and such names in biblical
+criticism as Strauss and Renan.</p>
+
+<p>The outposts, it is true, had been won by advancing scientific thought,
+for step by step the Church had compromised, and had admitted one
+scientific doctrine after another as not incompatible with biblical truth.
+But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> now, not only theology, the imperfect armor in which the spirit had
+been clothed, was attacked, but the very existence of spirit itself was to
+be questioned. The thinking world was to be divided into materialists and
+supernaturalists. Now, at last, mind and spirit, who in the ages long gone
+had been brothers, were to stand face to face as enemies. Was this mortal
+combat to end in the annihilation of either, or would this, too, end in a
+compromise leading to harmony?</p>
+
+<p>At the dawn of this century, in 1812, came into the world its master
+poetic mind. I say this to-day without hesitation, for no other English
+poet of the century has been so thoroughly aware of the intellectual
+tendencies of his century, and has so emotionalized them and brought them
+before us under the humanly real conditions of dramatic utterance.</p>
+
+<p>It is not surprising, considering this fact, that in his second poem,
+written in 1835, Browning ventures into the arena and at once tackles the
+supreme problem of the age, what is to be the relation of mind and spirit?</p>
+
+<p>It is characteristic of the poetic methods, which dominated his work, that
+he should have presented this problem through the personality of a
+historical figure who played no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> inconsiderable part in the intellectual
+development of his time, though not a man to whom general historians have
+been in the habit of assigning much space in their pages. Browning,
+however, as Hall Griffin informs us, had been familiar with the name of
+Paracelsus from his childhood, of whom he had read anecdotes in a queer
+book, Wanley&#8217;s &#8220;Wonders of the Little World.&#8221; Besides, his father&#8217;s
+library, wherein as a boy he was wont to browse constantly, contained the
+<i>Opera Omnia</i> of Paracelsus.</p>
+
+<p>With the confidence of youth and of genius the poet attempts in this poem
+a solution of the problem. To mind he gives the attribute of knowledge, to
+spirit the attribute of love.</p>
+
+<p>The poem as a whole does not concern us here except as a background for
+its final thoughts. In order, however, to put the situation clearly before
+readers not already familiar with it, I venture to transcribe a portion of
+a former analysis of my own.</p>
+
+<p>Paracelsus aspires to the acquisition of absolute knowledge and feels born
+within him the capabilities for attaining this end, and, when attained, it
+is to be devoted to enlarging the possibilities of man&#8217;s life. The whole
+race is to be elevated at once. Man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> may not be doomed to cope with
+seraphs, yet by the exercise of human strength alone he hopes man may one
+day beat God&#8217;s angels.</p>
+
+<p>He is a revolter, however, against the magical and alchemistic methods of
+his age, which seek for the welfare of men through the elixir of youth or
+the philosopher&#8217;s stone. He especially disclaims such puerile schemes in
+the passionate moment when he has realized how futile all his lifelong
+efforts have been. He stands, indeed, at the threshold of a new world. He
+has a glimmering of the true scientific methods which would discover first
+the secrets of life&#8217;s laws, and then use these natural laws to bring about
+life&#8217;s betterment, instead of hoping for salvation through the discovery
+of some magic secret by means of which life&#8217;s laws might be overcome. Yet
+he is sufficiently of his own superstitious age to desire and expect
+fairly magical results from the laws he hopes to discover. The creed which
+spurs him to his quest is his belief that truth is inborn in the soul, but
+to set this truth free and make it of use to mankind correspondences in
+outer nature must be found. An intuitive mind like Paracelsus&#8217;s will
+recognize these natural corollaries of the intuition wherever it finds
+them; and these are what Paracelsus goes forth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> over the earth to seek
+and find, sure he will &#8220;arrive.&#8221; One illustration of the results so
+obtained is seen in the doctrine of the signatures of plants according to
+which the flowers, leaves, and fruits of plants indicate by their color or
+markings, etc., the particular diseases they are intended to cure. The
+real Paracelsus practised medicine upon this theory.</p>
+
+<p>Though such methods are a long distance from those of the modern
+scientist, who deduces his laws from careful and patient observation of
+nature, they go a step toward his in seeking laws in nature to correspond
+to hypotheses born of intuition.</p>
+
+<p>Browning&#8217;s presentation of the attitude of mind and the place held by
+Paracelsus in the development of science is exactly in line with the most
+recent criticisms of this extraordinary man&#8217;s life. According to these he
+fluctuated between the systems of magic then prevalent and scientific
+observation, but always finally threw in the balance of his opinion on the
+side of scientific ways of working; and above all made the great step from
+a belief in the influence of nature upon man to that of the existence of
+parallelisms between nature processes and human processes.</p>
+
+<p>Though he thus opened up new vistas for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> the benefit of man, he must
+necessarily be a failure, from his own point of view, with his &#8220;India&#8221; not
+found, his absolute truth unattained; and it is upon this side that the
+poet dwells. For a moment he is somewhat reassured by the apparition of
+Aprile, scarcely a creature of flesh and blood, more the spirit of art who
+aspires to love infinitely and has found the attainment of such love as
+impossible as Paracelsus has found the attainment of knowledge. Both have
+desired to help men, but Paracelsus has desired to help them rather
+through the perfecting, even immortalizing, of their physical being;
+Aprile, through giving man, as he is, infinite sympathy and through
+creating forms of beauty which would show him his own thoughts and hopes
+glorified by the all-seeing touch of the artist.</p>
+
+<p>Paracelsus recognizes his deficient sympathy for mankind, and tries to
+make up for it in his own way by giving out of the fulness of his
+knowledge to men. The scornful and proud reformer has not, however, truly
+learned the lesson of love, and verily has his reward when he is turned
+against by those whom he would teach. Then the old ideal seizes upon him
+again, and still under the influence of Aprile he seeks in human
+experience the loves and passions of mankind which he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> learns through
+Aprile he had neglected for the ever-illusive secret, but neither does
+success attend him here, and only on his deathbed does his vision clear
+up, and he is made to indulge in a prophetic utterance quite beyond the
+reach of the original Paracelsus.</p>
+
+<p>In this passage is to be found Browning&#8217;s first contribution to a solution
+of the great problem. That it is instinct with the idea of evolution has
+become a commonplace of Browning criticism, a fact which was at least
+independently or, as far as I know, first pointed out by myself in an
+early essay upon Browning. At the time, I was reading both Browning and
+Spencer, and could not but be impressed by the parallelisms in thought
+between the two, especially those in this seer-like passage and &#8220;The Data
+of Ethics.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Writers whose appreciation of a poet is in direct ratio to the number of
+exact historical facts to be found in a poem like to emphasize this fact
+that the doctrine of evolution can be found in the works of Paracelsus.
+Why not? Since, as we have seen it had been floating about in
+philosophical thought in one form or another for some thousands of years.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, it has been stated upon good authority that the idea of a gradual
+evolution<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> according to law and of a God from whom all being emanates,
+from whom all power proceeds, is an inherent necessity of the Aryan mind
+as opposed to the Semitic idea of an outdwelling God and of
+supernaturalism. Thus, all down the ages the Aryan mind has revolted from
+time to time against the religious ideas superimposed upon it by the
+Semitic mind. This accounts for the numerous heresies within the bosom of
+the Church as well as for the scientific advance against the superstitions
+of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>Generalizations of this sweeping order are apt to contain only partial
+truth. It would probably be nearer the whole truth, as we are enabled
+to-day to trace historical development, to say that, starting with
+opposite conceptions, these two orders of mind have worked toward each
+other and the harmonization of their respective points of view, and,
+furthermore, that this difference in mind belongs to a period prior even
+to the emergence of the Aryan or the Semitic. Researches in mythology and
+folklore seem to indicate that no matter how far back one may go in the
+records of human thought there will be found these two orders of mind&mdash;one
+which naturally thinks of the universe as the outcome of law, and one
+which naturally<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> thinks of it as the outcome of creation. There are
+primitive myths in which mankind is supposed to be descended from a
+primitive ancestor, which may range all the way from a serpent to an oak
+tree, or, as in a certain Zulu myth, a bed of reeds growing on the back of
+a small animal. And there are equally primitive myths in which mankind is
+created out of the trees or the earth by an external agent, varying in
+importance from a grasshopper to a more or less spiritual being.</p>
+
+<p>Browning did not need to depend upon Paracelsus for his knowledge of
+evolution. He may not have known that the ancient Hindu in the dim mists
+of the past had an intuition of the cosmic egg from which all life had
+evolved, and that he did not know of the theory as it is developed in the
+great German philosophers we are certain, because he, himself, asseverated
+that he had never read the German philosophers, but it is hardly possible
+that he did not know something of it as it appears in the writings of the
+Greek philosophers, for Greek literature was among the earliest of his
+studies. He might, for instance, have taken a hint from the speculations
+of that half mythical marvel of a man, Empedocles, with which the
+Paracelsus theory of the universe, as it appears in the passage<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> under
+discussion, has many points of contact.</p>
+
+<p>According to Empedocles, the four primal elements, earth, air, fire and
+water, are worked upon by the forces of love and discord. By means of
+these forces, out of the primal elements are evolved various and horrible
+monstrosities before the final form of perfection is reached. It is true
+he did not correctly imagine the stages in the processes of evolution, for
+instead of a gradual development of one form from another, he describes
+the process as a haphazard and chaotic one. &#8220;Many heads sprouted up
+without necks, and naked arms went wandering forlorn of shoulders, and
+solitary eyes were straying destitute of foreheads.&#8221; These detached
+portions of bodies coming together by haphazard produced the earlier
+monstrous forms. &#8220;Many came forth with double faces and two breasts, some
+shaped like oxen with a human front, others, again, of human race with a
+bull&#8217;s head.&#8221; However, the latter part of the evolutionary process as
+described by Empedocles, when Love takes command, seems especially
+pertinent as a possible source of Browning&#8217;s thought:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;When strife has reached the very bottom of the seething mass, and
+love assumes her station in the center of the ball,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> then everything
+begins to come together, and to form one whole&mdash;not instantaneously,
+but different substances come forth, according to a steady process of
+development. Now, when these elements are mingling, countless kinds of
+things issue from their union. Much, however, remains unmixed, in
+opposition to the mingling elements, and these, malignant strife still
+holds within his grasp. For he has not yet withdrawn himself
+altogether to the extremities of the globe; but part of his limbs
+still remain within its bounds, and part have passed beyond. As
+strife, however, step by step retreats, mild and innocent love pursues
+him with her force divine; things which had been immortal instantly
+assume mortality; the simple elements become confused by interchange
+of influences. When these are mingled, then the countless kinds of
+mortal beings issue forth, furnished with every sort of form&mdash;a sight
+of wonder.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Though evolution was no new idea, it had been only a hypothesis arrived at
+intuitionally or suggested by crude observations of nature until by
+perfected methods of historical study and of scientific experimentation
+proof was furnished of its truth as a scientific verity.</p>
+
+<p>Let us glance at the situation at the time when Paracelsus was published.
+In 1835 science had made great strides in the direction of proving the
+correctness of the hypothesis. Laplace had lived and died and had given to
+the world in mathematical reasoning of remarkable power proof of the
+nebular hypothesis, which was later to be verified by Fraunhofer&#8217;s
+discoveries in spectrum analysis.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> Lamarck had lived and died and had
+given to the world his theory of animal evolution. Lyall in England had
+shown that geological formations were evolutionary rather than
+cataclysmal. In fact, greater and lesser scientific lights in England and
+on the continent were every day adding fresh facts to the burden of proof
+in favor of the hypothesis. It was in the air, and denunciations of it
+were in the air.</p>
+
+<p>Most interesting of all, however, in connection with our present theme is
+the fact that Herbert Spencer was still a lad of fifteen, who was
+independently of Darwin to work out a complete philosophy of evolution,
+which was to be applied in every department of cosmic, geologic, plant,
+animal and human activity, but (and this is of special interest) he was
+not to give to the world his plan for a synthetic philosophy until 1860,
+and not to publish his &#8220;First Principles&#8221; until 1862, nor the first
+instalment of the &#8220;Data of Ethics,&#8221; the fruit of his whole system, until
+1879.</p>
+
+<p>Besides being familiar with the idea as it crops out in Greek thought, it
+is impossible that the young Browning was not cognizant of the scientific
+attitude of the time. In fact, he tells us as much himself, for when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+Doctor Wonivall asked him some questions as to his attitude toward Darwin,
+Browning responded in a letter: &#8220;In reality all that seems proved in
+Darwin&#8217;s scheme was a conception familiar to me from the beginning.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Entirely familiar with the evolutionary idea, then, however he may have
+derived it, it is just what might be expected that he should have worked
+it into Paracelsus&#8217;s final theory of life. The remarkable thing is that he
+should have applied its principles in so masterly a fashion&mdash;namely, that
+he should have made a complete philosophical synthesis by bringing the
+idea of evolution to bear upon all natural, human and spiritual processes
+of growth twenty-five years before Herbert Spencer, who is regarded on
+this particular ground as the master mind of the century, gave his
+synthetic philosophy of evolution to the world.</p>
+
+<p>A momentary glance at the passage in question will make this clear.
+Paracelsus traces first development as illustrated in geological forms:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;The center-fire heaves underneath the earth,</span><br />
+And the earth changes like a human face;<br />
+The molten one bursts up among the rocks,<br />
+Winds into the stone&#8217;s heart, outbranches bright<br />
+In hidden mines, spots barren river beds,<br />
+Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>Next he touches upon plant life and animal life. The grass grows bright,
+the boughs are swollen with blooms, ants make their ado, birds fly in
+merry flocks, the strand is purple with its tribe of nested limpets,
+savage creatures seek their loves in wood and plain. Then he shows how in
+all this animal life are scattered attributes foreshadowing a being that
+will combine them. Then appears primitive man, only half enlightened, who
+gains knowledge through the slow, uncertain fruit of toil, whose love is
+not serenely pure, but strong from weakness, a love which endures and
+doubts and is oppressed. And out of the travail of the human soul as it
+proceeds from lower to higher forms is finally evolved self-conscious
+man&mdash;man who consciously looks back upon all that has preceded him and
+interprets nature by means of his own human perceptions. The winds are
+henceforth voices, wailing or a shout, a querulous mutter or a quick, gay
+laugh, never a senseless gust, now man is born.</p>
+
+<p>But development does not end with the attainment of this
+self-consciousness. After this stage has been reached there continues an
+evolution which is distinctively spiritual, a tendency to God. Browning
+was not content<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> with the evolution of man, he was prophetic of the final
+flowering of man in the superman, although he had never heard of
+Nietszche.</p>
+
+<p>The corollary to this progressive theory of life, a view held by
+scientific thinkers, is that sin is not depravity, but is merely a lack of
+development. Paracelsus is therefore made wise to know even hate is but a
+mask of love, to see a good in evil, a hope in ill-success, to sympathize,
+even be proud of man&#8217;s half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim struggles for
+truth&mdash;all with a touch of nobleness despite their error, upward tending
+all, though weak.</p>
+
+<p>Though there are points of contact between the thought of the true
+Paracelsus and of Browning, the points of contact between Spencer and
+Browning are far more significant, for Browning seems intuitively to have
+perceived the fundamental truths of social and psychic evolution at the
+early age of twenty-three&mdash;truths which the philosopher worked out only
+after years of laborious study.</p>
+
+<p>We, who, to-day, are familiar with the application of the theory of
+evolution to every object from a dustpan to a flying machine, can hardly
+throw ourselves into the atmosphere of the first half of the last century
+when this dynamic ideal was flung into a world with static ideals. The
+Christian world<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> knew little and cared less about the guesses of Greek
+philosophers, whom they regarded when they did know about them as
+unregenerate pagans. German thought was caviare to the general, and what
+new thought of a historical or scientific nature made its way into the
+strongholds of conservatism filled people with suspicion and dread. Such a
+sweeping synthesis, therefore, as Browning gives of dawning scientific
+theories in Paracelsus was truly phenomenal. That it did not prove a bone
+of contention and arouse controversies as hot as those which were waged
+later around such scientific leaders as Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, and
+Clifford was probably due to the circumstance that the poem was little
+read and less understood, and also to the fact that it contained other
+elements which overlaid the bare presentation of the doctrines of
+evolution.</p>
+
+<p>So far I have spoken only of the form of the Paracelsus theory of life,
+but a theory of life to be complete must have soul as well as form. Only
+in adding the soul side to his theory of life does Browning really give
+his solution of the problem, what is to be the relation of mind and
+spirit?</p>
+
+<p>One other point of resemblance is to be noted between the thought of
+Browning&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> Paracelsus and Herbert Spencer. They agree that ultimate
+knowledge is beyond the grasp of the intellect. Neither was this a new
+idea; but up to the time of Spencer it was taken simply as a negative
+conclusion. Spencer, however, having found this negation makes it the body
+of his philosophy&mdash;a body so shadowy that many of his critics consider it
+too ghostly to stand as a substantial basis for philosophical thought. He
+regards the failure of the intellect to picture the nature of the absolute
+as the most certain proof that our intuitions of its existence are
+trustworthy, and upon this he bases all religious aspiration. Like the
+psalmist, he exclaims, &#8220;Who by searching can find out God?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The attitude of Paracelsus is identical as far as the intellect is
+concerned. His life, spent in the search for knowledge, had proved it to
+him. But he does not, like Spencer, make it the body of his philosophy.
+Through the influence of Aprile he is led to a definite conception of the
+Infinite as a Being whose especial characteristic is that he feels!&mdash;feels
+unbounded joy in his own creations. This is eminently an artist&#8217;s or
+poet&#8217;s perception of the relation of God to his universe. As Aprile in one
+place says, &#8220;God is the perfect poet, who in his person acts his own
+creations.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>As I have already pointed out, the evil of pain, of decay, of degeneration
+is taken no account of.</p>
+
+<p>There is the constant passing onward from joy to joy. All the processes of
+nature from the simplest to the most complex bring, in their turn, a
+delight to their Creator until man appears, and is not only a joy to his
+Creator, but is the first in the order of creation to share in the joy of
+existence, the first to arrive at the full consciousness of beauty. So
+overwhelming is this consciousness of beauty that man perceives it
+struggling for expression in the hates and fallacies of undeveloped
+natures.</p>
+
+<p>All this is characteristic of the artistic way of looking at life. The
+artist is prone either to ignore the ugly or to transmute it by art into
+something possessing beauty of power if not of loveliness. What are plays
+like &#8220;Hamlet&#8221; and &#8220;Macbeth,&#8221; &#8220;Brand&#8221; and &#8220;Peer Gynt,&#8221; music like &#8220;Tristan
+and Isolde&#8221; or the &#8220;Pathetic Symphony,&#8221; Rodin&#8217;s statues, but actual,
+palpable realizations of the fact that hate is but a mask of love, or that
+human fallacies and human passions have within them the seeds of immense
+beauty if only there appear the artist who can bring them forth. If this
+is true of the human artist,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> how much more is it true of the divine
+artist in whose shadow, as Pompilia says, even a Guido may find healing.</p>
+
+<p>The optimism of such a theory of existence is intoxicating. Not only does
+this artist-man look backward and rejoice in all the beauty of past phases
+of creation, but he looks forward to endless progression in the enjoyment
+of fresh phases of beauty&mdash;&#8220;a flying point of bliss remote.&#8221; This is a
+universe in which the Prometheus of the old myths is indeed unbound.
+Mankind is literally free to progress forever upward. If there are some
+men in darkness, they are like plants in mines struggling to break out
+into the sunlight they see beyond.</p>
+
+<p>The interesting question arises here, was Browning, himself, entirely
+responsible for the soul of his Paracelsus theory of life or was there
+some source beyond him from which he drew inspiration?</p>
+
+<p>It has frequently been suggested that Aprile in this poem is a sort of
+symbolic representation of Shelley. Why not rather a composite of both
+Shelley and Keats, the poet of love and the poet of beauty? An examination
+of the greatest poems of these two writers, &#8220;Prometheus Unbound&#8221; and
+&#8220;Hyperion,&#8221; will bring out the elements in both<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> which I believe entered
+into Browning&#8217;s conception.</p>
+
+<p>In the exalted symbolism of the &#8220;Prometheus Unbound&#8221; Shelley shows that,
+in his view, evil and suffering were not inherent in the nature of things,
+the tyranny of evil having gained its ascendancy through the persistence
+of out-worn ideals, such as that of Power or Force symbolized in the Greek
+idea of Jupiter. Prometheus is the revolting mind of mankind, enslaved by
+the tyranny of Jupiter, hating the tyrant, yet determined to endure all
+the tyrant can inflict upon him rather than admit his right to rule. The
+freeing of Prometheus and the dethronement of Jupiter come through the
+awakening in the heart of Prometheus of pity for the tyrant&mdash;that is,
+Prometheus has learned to love his enemies as he loves his friends. The
+remainder of the poem is occupied with showing the effects upon humanity
+of this universal awakening of love.</p>
+
+<p>In the fine passage where the Spirit of the Earth hears the trumpet of the
+Spirit of the Hour sound in a great city, it beholds all ugly human shapes
+and visages which had caused it pain pass floating through the air, and
+fading still</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+&#8220;Into the winds that scattered them, and those<br />
+From whom they passed seemed mild and lovely forms<br />
+After some foul disguise had fallen, and all<br />
+Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise<br />
+And greetings of delighted wonder, all<br />
+Went to their sleep again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And the Spirit of the Hour relates:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled<br />
+The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,<br />
+There was a change: the impalpable thin air<br />
+And the all-circling sunlight were transformed<br />
+As if the sense of love dissolved in them<br />
+Had folded itself around the sphered world.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, the over-souls of humanity&mdash;Prometheus, symbolic of
+thought or knowledge, is reunited to Asia, his spouse, symbolic of Nature
+or emotion, from whom he has long been separated and together with Asia&#8217;s
+sisters, Panthea and Ione&mdash;retire to the wonderful cave where they are
+henceforth to dwell and where their occupations are inspired by the most
+childlike and exalted moods of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>Before considering the bearing of their life of love and art in the cave
+upon the character of Aprile let us turn our attention for a moment to a
+remarkable passage in &#8220;Hyperion,&#8221; which poem was written as far back as
+1820. Keats, like Shelley, deals with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> dethronement of gods, but it
+is the older dynasty of Titans&mdash;Saturn and Hyperion usurped by Jupiter and
+Apollo. Shelley&#8217;s thought in the &#8220;Prometheus&#8221; is strongly influenced by
+Christian ideals, but Keats&#8217;s is thoroughly Greek.</p>
+
+<p>The passing of one series of gods and the coming into power of another
+series of gods was a familiar idea in Greek mythology. It reflected at
+once the literal fact that ever higher and higher forces of nature had
+been deified by them, beginning with crude Nature gods and ending with
+symbols of the most ideal human attributes, and at the same time that
+their thought leaned in the direction of interpreting nature as an
+evolutionary process. Seizing upon this, Keats has presented in the words
+of the old Titan Oceanus a theory of the evolution of beauty quite as
+startling as a prophecy of psychological theories upon this subject as
+Browning&#8217;s is of cosmic and social theories. Addressing Saturn, Oceanus
+says:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;We fall by course of Nature&#8217;s law, not force<br />
+Of thunder, or of love....<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">... As thou wast not the first of powers</span><br />
+So art thou not the last; it cannot be:<br />
+From chaos and parental darkness came<br />
+Light, the first fruits of that intestine broil,<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>That sullen ferment, which for wondrous ends<br />
+Was ripening in itself. The ripe hour came<br />
+And with it light, and light, engendering<br />
+Upon its own producer, forthwith touched,<br />
+The whole enormous matter into life.<br />
+Upon that very hour, our parentage<br />
+The Heavens and the Earth were manifest;<br />
+Then thou first-born, and we the giant-race,<br />
+Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><strong><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></strong></span><br />
+As Heaven and Earth are fairer far<br />
+Than chaos and blank darkness, though once chiefs,<br />
+And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth<br />
+In form and shape compact and beautiful,<br />
+In will, in action free, companionship<br />
+And thousand other signs of purer life,<br />
+So on our heels a fresh perfection treads,<br />
+A power more strong in beauty, born of us<br />
+And fated to excel us, as we pass<br />
+In glory that old darkness: nor are we<br />
+Thereby more conquered than by us the rule<br />
+Of shapeless chaos. For &#8217;tis the eternal law<br />
+That first in beauty should be first in might.<br />
+Yea, by that law, another race may drive<br />
+Our conquerors to mourn as we do now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There is in the attitude of Oceanus a magnificent acceptance of this
+ruthless course of nature reminding one of that taken by such men as
+Huxley and Clifford in the face of their own scientific discoveries, but
+one is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> immediately struck by the absence of love in the idea. An Apollo,
+no matter what new beauty he may have, himself, to offer, who yet
+disregards the beauty of Hyperion and calmly accepts the throne of the sun
+in his stead, does not satisfy us. What unreason it is that so splendid a
+being as Hyperion should be deposed! As a matter of fact, he was not
+deposed. He is left standing forever in our memories in splendor like the
+morn, for Keats did not finish the poem and no picture of the enthroned
+Apollo is given. Perhaps Keats remembered his earlier utterance, &#8220;A thing
+of beauty is a joy forever,&#8221; and cared for his own Hyperion too much to
+banish him for the sake of Apollo.</p>
+
+<p>Be that as it may, the points in relation to our subject are that
+Shelley&#8217;s emphasis is upon the conservation of beauty, while Keats&#8217;s
+emphasis is upon the evolution of new beauty.</p>
+
+<p>In the cave where Prometheus and Asia dwell&mdash;the cave of universal
+spirit&mdash;is given forth the inspiration to humanity for painting, poetry
+and arts, yet to be born, and all these arts return to delight them,
+fashioned into form by human artists. Love is the ruling principle.
+Therefore all forms of beautiful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> art are immortal.
+Aprile,<small><a name="f1.1" id="f1.1" href="#f1">[1]</a></small> as he
+first appears, is an elaboration upon this idea. He would love all
+humanity with such intensity that he would immortalize in all forms of
+art&mdash;painting, poetry, music&mdash;every thought and emotion of which the human
+soul is capable, and this done he would say:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">&#8220;His spirits created&mdash;</span><br />
+God grants to each a sphere to be its world,<br />
+Appointed with the various objects needed<br />
+To satisfy its own peculiar want;<br />
+So, I create a world for these my shapes<br />
+Fit to sustain their beauty and their strength.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In short, he would found a universal art museum exactly like the cave in
+which Prometheus dwelt. The stress is no more than it is in Shelley upon a
+search for new beauty, and there is not a hint that a coming beauty shall
+blot out the old until Aprile recognizes Paracelsus as his king. Then he
+awakes to the fact that his own ideal has been partial,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> because he has
+not been a seeker after knowledge, or new beauty, and in much the same
+spirit as Oceanus, he exclaims:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Lo, I forget my ruin, and rejoice<br />
+In thy success, as thou! Let our God&#8217;s praise<br />
+Go bravely through the world at last! What care<br />
+Through me or thee?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Paracelsus had learned a lesson through Aprile which the Apollo of
+Keats had not learned. He does not accept kingship at the expense of
+Aprile as Apollo would do at the expense of Hyperion. He includes in his
+final theory of life all that is beautiful in Aprile&#8217;s or Shelley&#8217;s ideal
+and adds to it all that is beautiful of the Keats ideal. The form of his
+philosophy is evolutionary, and up to the time of his meeting with Aprile
+had expressed itself as the search for knowledge. Through Aprile his
+philosophy becomes imbued with soul, the attributes of which are the
+spirit of love and the spirit of beauty, one of which conserves and
+immortalizes beauty, the other of which searches out new beauty.</p>
+
+<p>So, working hand in hand, they become one, while the search for knowledge,
+thus spiritualized, becomes the search for beauty always inspired by love.
+The aim of the evolutionary process thus becomes the unfolding of ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+new phases of beauty in which God takes endless delight, and to the final
+enjoyment of which mankind shall attain.</p>
+
+<p>To sum up, Browning&#8217;s solution of the problem in the Paracelsus theory of
+life is reached not only through a synthesis of the doctrines of evolution
+as applied to universal activities, cosmic and human, prophetic, on the
+one hand, of the most advanced scientific thought of the century, but it
+is a synthesis of these and of the art-spirit in its twofold aspect of
+love and beauty as already expressed in the poetry of Shelley and Keats.</p>
+
+<p>It is not in the least probable that Browning set to work consciously to
+piece together these ideals. That is not the method of the artist! But
+being familiar to him in the two best beloved poets of his youth, they had
+sunk into his very being, and welled forth from his own subconsciousness,
+charged with personal emotion, partly dramatic, partly the expression of
+his own true feeling at the time, and the result be it said is one of the
+most inspiring and beautiful passages in English poetry.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img03.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Paracelsus</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>At the end of his life and the end of the century Herbert Spencer, who had
+spent years of labor to prove the fallacies in all religious dogmas, and
+who had insisted upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> religion&#8217;s being entirely relegated to
+intellectually unknowable regions of thought, spoke in his autobiography
+of the mysteries inherent in life, in the evolution of human beings, in
+consciousness, in human destiny&mdash;mysteries that the very advance of
+science makes more and more evident, exhibits as more and more profound
+and impenetrable, adding:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Thus religious creeds, which in one way or other occupy the sphere
+that rational interpretation seeks to occupy and fails, and fails the
+more, the more it seeks, I have come to regard with a sympathy based
+on community of need: feeling that dissent from them results from
+inability to accept the solutions offered, joined with the wish that
+solutions could be found.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Loyal to the last to his determination to accept as knowledge only what
+the intellect could prove, he never permitted himself to come under the
+awakening influence of an Aprile, yet like Browning&#8217;s ancient Greek,
+Cleon, he longed for a solution of the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>At the dawn of the century, and in his youth, Browning ventured upon a
+solution. In the remainder of this and the next chapter I shall attempt to
+show what elements in this solution the poet retained to the end of his
+life, how his thought became modified, and what relation his final
+solution bears to the final thought of the century.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>In this first attempt at a synthesis of life in which the attributes
+peculiar to the mind and to the spirit are brought into harmonious
+relationship, Browning is more the intuitionalist than the scientist. His
+convictions well forth with all the force of an inborn revelation, just as
+kindred though much less rational views of nature&#8217;s processes sprang up in
+the mind of the ancient Hindu or the ancient Greek.</p>
+
+<p>The philosophy of life herein flashed out by the poet was later to be
+elaborated fully on its objective or observational side by Spencer&mdash;the
+philosopher par excellence of evolution&mdash;and finally, also, of course, on
+the objective side, to become an assured fact of science through the
+publication in 1859 of Darwin&#8217;s epoch-making book, &#8220;The Origin of
+Species,&#8221; wherein the laws, so disturbing to many at the time, of natural
+selection and the survival of the fittest were fully set forth.</p>
+
+<p>While the genetic view of nature, as the phraseology of to-day goes, had
+been anticipated in writers on cosmology like Leibnitz and Laplace, in
+geology by such men as Hutton and Lyall, and had entered into the domain
+of embryology through the researches of Von Baer, and while Spencer had
+already formulated a philosophy of evolution, Darwin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> went out into the
+open and studied the actual facts in the domain of living beings. His
+studies made evolution a certainty. They revealed the means by which its
+processes were accomplished, and in so doing pointed to an origin of man
+entirely opposed to orthodox views upon this subject. Thus was inaugurated
+the last great phase in the struggle between mind and spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Henceforth, science stood completely revealed as the unflinching searcher
+of truth. Intuition was but a handmaid whose duty was to formulate working
+hypotheses, to become scientific law if provable by investigation or
+experiment, to be discarded if not.</p>
+
+<p>The aspects which this battle has assumed in the latter half of the
+century have been many and various. Older sciences with a new lease of
+life and sciences entirely new have advanced along the path pointed out by
+the doctrines of evolution. Battalions of determined men have held aloft
+the banner of uncompromising truth. Each battalion has stormed truth&#8217;s
+citadel only to find that about its inmost reality is an impregnable wall.
+The utmost which has been attained in any case is a working hypothesis,
+useful in bringing to light many new objective <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>phenomena, it is true,
+but, in the end, serving only to deepen the mystery inherent in the nature
+of all things.</p>
+
+<p>Such a working hypothesis was the earlier one of gravitation whose laws of
+action were elaborated by Sir Isaac Newton, and by the great mind of
+Laplace were still further developed with marvelous mathematical precision
+in his &#8220;M&eacute;chanique Celeste.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Such another hypothesis is that of the atomic theory of the constitution
+of matter usually associated with the name of Dalton, though it has
+undergone many modifications from other scientific thinkers. Of this
+hypothesis Theodore Merz writes in his history of nineteenth-century
+scientific thought:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;As to the nature of the differences of the elements, the atomic view
+gives no information; it simply asserts these differences, assumes
+them as physical constants, and tries to describe them by number and
+measurement. The atomic view is therefore at best only a provisional
+basis, a convenient resting place, similar to that which Newton found
+in physical astronomy, and on which has been established the
+astronomical view of nature.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>The vibratory theories of the ether, the theories of the conservation of
+energy, the vitalistic view of life, the theory of parallelism of physical
+and psychical phenomena are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> all such hypotheses. They have been of
+incalculable value in helping to a larger knowledge of the appearances of
+things, and in the formation of laws of action and reaction, but in no way
+have they aided in revealing the inner or transcendent realities of the
+myriad manifestations of nature and life!</p>
+
+<p>During the last half of the century this truth has forced itself with ever
+increasing power upon the minds of scientists, and has resulted in many
+divisions among the ranks. Some rest upon phenomena as the final reality;
+hence materialistic or mechanical views of life. Some believe that the
+only genuine reality is the one undiscoverable by science; hence new
+presentations of metaphysical views of life.</p>
+
+<p>During these decades the solid phalanx of religious believers has
+continued to watch from its heights with more or less of fear the advance
+of science. Here, too, there has been division in the ranks. Many
+denounced the scientists as the destroyers of religion; others like the
+good Bishop Colenso could write such words as these in 1873: &#8220;Bless God
+devoutly for the gift of modern science&#8221;; and who ten years earlier had
+expressed satisfaction in the fact that superstitious belief in the letter
+of the Bible was giving way to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> true appreciation of the real value of
+the ancient Hebrew Scriptures as containing the dawn of religious light.</p>
+
+<p>From another quarter came the critical students of the Bible, who
+subjected its contents to the keen tests of historical and arch&aelig;ological
+study. Serene, above all the turmoil, was the small band of genuine
+philosophers who, like Browning&#8217;s own musician, Abt Vogler, knew the very
+truth. No matter what disturbing facts may be brought to light by science,
+be it man&#8217;s descent from Anthropoids or a mechanical view of sensation,
+they continue to dwell unshaken in the light of a transcendent truth which
+reaches them through some other avenue than that of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>Browning belonged by nature in this last group. Already in &#8220;Sordello&#8221; his
+attention is turned to the development of the soul, and from that time on
+to the end of his career he is the champion of the soul-side of existence
+with all that it implies of character development&mdash;&#8220;little else being
+worth study,&#8221; as he declared in his introduction to a second edition of
+the poem written twenty years after its first appearance.</p>
+
+<p>On this rock, the human soul, he takes his stand, and, though all the
+complex waves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> of the tempest of nineteenth-century thought break against
+his feet, he remains firm.</p>
+
+<p>Beginning with &#8220;Sordello,&#8221; it is no longer evolution as applied to every
+aspect of the universe but evolution as applied to the human spirit which
+has his chief interest. Problems growing out of the marvelous developments
+of such sciences as astronomy, geology, physics, chemistry or biology do
+not enter into the main body of the poet&#8217;s thought, though there are
+allusions many and exact which show his familiarity with the growth of
+these various objective sciences during his life.</p>
+
+<p>During all the middle years of his poetic career the relations of the mind
+and the spirit seemed to fascinate Browning, especially upon the side of
+the problems connected with the supernatural bases of religious
+experience. These are the problems which grew out of that phase of
+scholarly advance represented by biblical criticism.</p>
+
+<p>Such a poem as &#8220;Saul,&#8221; for example, though full of a humanity and
+tenderness, as well as of a sheer poetic beauty, which endear it alike to
+those who appreciate little more than the content of the poem, and to
+those whose appreciation is that of the connoisseur in poetic art, is
+nevertheless an interpretation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> of the origin of prophecy, especially of
+the Messianic idea, which places Browning in the van of the thought of the
+century on questions connected with biblical criticism.</p>
+
+<p>At the time when &#8220;Saul&#8221; was written, 1845, modern biblical criticism had
+certainly gained very little hearing in England, for even as late as 1862
+Bishop Colenso&#8217;s enlightened book on the Pentateuch was received, as one
+writer expresses it, with &#8220;almost unanimous disapprobation and widespread
+horror.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Critics of the Bible there had been since the seventeenth century, but
+they had produced a confused mass of stuff in their attacks upon the
+authenticity of the Bible against which the orthodox apologists had
+succeeded in holding their own. At the end of the eighteenth and the dawn
+of the nineteenth century came the more systematic criticism of German
+scholars, echoes of whose theories found their way into England through
+the studies of such men as Pusey. But these, though they gave full
+consideration to the foremost of the German critics of the day, ranged
+themselves, for the most part, on the side of orthodoxy.</p>
+
+<p>Eichhorn, one of the first of the Germans to be studied in England, had
+found a point of departure in the celebrated &#8220;Wolfenb&uuml;ttel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> Fragments,&#8221;
+which had been printed by Lessing from manuscripts by an unknown writer
+Reimarus discovered in the Wolfenb&uuml;ttel library. These fragments represent
+criticism of the sweepingly destructive order, characteristic of what has
+been called the naturalistic school. Although Eichhorn agreed with the
+writer of the &#8220;Fragments&#8221; that the biblical narratives should be divested
+of all their supernatural aspects, he did not interpret the supernatural
+elements as simply frauds designed to deceive in order that personal ends
+might be gained. He restored dignity to the narrative by insisting at once
+upon its historical verity and upon a natural interpretation of the
+supernatural&mdash;&#8220;a spontaneous illumination reflected from antiquity
+itself,&#8221; which might result from primitive misunderstanding of natural
+phenomena, from the poetical embellishment of facts, or the symbolizing of
+an idea.</p>
+
+<p>Doctor Paulus, in his commentary on the Gospels (1800), carried the idea
+still farther, and the rationalistic school of Bible criticism became an
+assured fact, though Kant at this time developed an entirely different
+theory of Bible interpretation, which in a sense harked back to the older
+allegorical interpretation of the Bible.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>He did not trouble himself at all about the historical accuracy of the
+narratives. He was concerned only in discovering the idea underlying the
+stories, the moral gist of them in relation to human development. With the
+naturalists and the rationalists, he put aside any idea of Divine
+revelation. It was the moral aspiration of the authors, themselves, which
+threw a supernatural glamour over their accounts of old traditions and
+turned them into symbols of life instead of merely records of bona fide
+facts of history. The weakness of Kant&#8217;s standpoint was later pointed out
+by Strauss, whose opinion is well summed up in the following paragraph.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Whilst Kant sought to educe moral thoughts from the biblical writings,
+even in their historical part, and was even inclined to consider these
+thoughts as the fundamental object of the history: on the other hand he
+derived these thoughts only from himself and the cultivation of his age,
+and therefore could seldom assume that they had actually been laid down by
+the authors of these writings; and on the other hand, and for the same
+reason, he omitted to show what was the relation between these thoughts
+and those symbolic representations, and how it happened that the one came
+to be expressed by the other.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>The next development of biblical criticism was the mythical mode of
+interpretation in which are prominent the names of Gabler, Schelling,
+Bauer, Vater, De Wette, and others. These critics among them set
+themselves the difficult task of classifying the Bible narratives under
+the heads of three kinds of myths: historical myths, philosophical myths,
+and poetical myths. The first were &#8220;narratives of real events colored by
+the light of antiquity, which confounded the divine and the human, the
+natural and the supernatural&#8221;; the second, &#8220;such as clothe in the garb of
+historical narrative a simple thought, a precept, or an idea of the time&#8221;;
+the third, &#8220;historical and philosophical myths partly blended together and
+partly embellished by the creations of the imagination, in which the
+original fact or idea is almost obscured by the veil which the fancy of
+the poet has woven around it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This sort of interpretation, first applied to the Old Testament, was later
+used in sifting history from myth to the New Testament.</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen that it has something in common with both the previously
+opposed views. The mythical interpretation agrees with the old allegorical
+view in so far that they both relinquish historical reality in favor of
+some inherent truth or religious conception<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> of which the historical
+semblance is merely the shell. On the other hand it agrees with the
+rationalistic view in the fact that it really gives a natural explanation
+of the process of the growth of myths and legends in human society.
+Immediate divine agency controls in the allegorical view, the spirit of
+individuals or of society controls in the mythical view.</p>
+
+<p>Neither the out-and-out rationalists nor the orthodox students of the
+Bible approved of this new mode of interpretation, which was more or less
+the outcome of the study of the sacred books of other religions. In 1835,
+however, appeared an epoch-making book which subjected the New Testament
+to the most elaborate criticism based upon mythical and legendary
+interpretation. This was the &#8220;Life of Jesus, Critically Examined,&#8221; by Dr.
+David Friedrich Strauss. This book caused a great stir in the theological
+world of Germany. Strauss was dismissed from his professorship in the
+University of T&uuml;bingen in consequence of it. Not only this, but in 1839,
+when he was appointed professor of Church History and Divinity at the
+University of Zurich, he was compelled at once to resign, and the
+administration which appointed him was overthrown. This veritable bomb
+thrown into the world of theology was translated by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> George Eliot, and
+published in England in 1846.</p>
+
+<p>Through this translation the most advanced German thought must have become
+familiar to many outside the pale of the professional scholar, and among
+them was, doubtless, the poet Browning, if indeed he had not already
+become familiar with it in the original. When the content and the thought
+of Browning&#8217;s poems upon religious subjects are examined, it becomes
+certain that he was familiar with the whole trend of biblical criticism in
+the first half of the century and of its effect upon certain of the
+orthodox churchmen, and that with full consciousness he brought forward in
+his religious poems, not didactically, but often by the subtlest
+indirections, his own attitude toward the problems raised in this
+department of scientific historical inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the problems which occupied his attention, such as that in &#8220;The
+Death in the Desert,&#8221; are directly traceable to the influence of Strauss&#8217;s
+book. Whether he knew of Strauss&#8217;s argument or not when he wrote &#8220;Saul,&#8221;
+his treatment of the story of David and Saul is not only entirely in
+sympathy with the creed of the German school of mythical interpreters, but
+the poet himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> becomes one of the myth makers in the series of
+prophets&mdash;that is, he takes the idea, the Messianic idea, poetically
+embellishes an old tradition, making it glow with humanness, throws into
+that idea not only a content beyond that which David could have dreamed
+of, but suggests a purely psychical origin of the Messianic idea itself in
+keeping with his own thought on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>The history of the origin and growth of the Messianic ideal as traced by
+the most modern Jewish critics claims it to have been a slow evolution in
+the minds of the prophets. In Genesis it appears as the prophecy of a time
+to come of universal happiness promised to Abraham, through whose seed all
+the peoples of the earth shall be blessed, because they had hearkened unto
+the voice of God. From a family ideal in Abraham it passed on to being a
+tribal ideal with Jacob, and with the prophets it became a national ideal,
+an aspiration toward individual happiness and a noble national life. Not
+until the time of Isaiah is a special agent mentioned who is to be the
+instrument by means of which the blessing is to be fulfilled, and there we
+read this prophecy: &#8220;There shall sprout forth a shoot from the stem of
+Jesse, upon whom will rest the spirit of Yahveh, the spirit of wisdom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+and understanding, of counsel and strength, of the knowledge and fear of
+God. He will not judge according to appearance, nor will he according to
+hearsay. He will govern in righteousness the poor, and judge with equity
+the humble of the earth. He will smite the mighty with the rod of his
+mouth, and the wicked with the breath of his lips.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The ideal expressed here of a great and wise national ruler who would
+bring about the realization of liberty, justice and peace to the Hebrew
+nation, and not only to them but to all mankind, becomes in the prophetic
+vision of Daniel a mystic being. &#8220;I saw in the visions of night, and
+behold, with the clouds of heaven came down as a likeness of the son of
+man. He stepped forward to the ancient of days. To him was given dominion,
+magnificence and rule. And all the peoples, nations and tongues did homage
+to him. His empire is an eternal empire and his realm shall never cease.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In &#8220;Saul&#8221; Browning makes David the type of the prophetic faculty in its
+complete development. His vision is of an ideal which was not fully
+unfolded until the advent of Jesus himself&mdash;the ideal not merely of the
+mythical political liberator but of the spiritual saviour, who through
+infinite love would bring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> redemption and immortality to mankind. David
+in the poem essays to cheer Saul with the thought of the greatness that
+will live after him in the memory of others, but his own passionate desire
+to give something better than this to Saul awakens in him the assurance
+that God must be as full of love and compassion as he is. Thus Browning
+explains the sudden awakening of David, not as a divine revelation from
+without, but as a natural growth of the human spirit Godward. This new
+perception of values produces the ecstasy during which David sees his
+visions, the &#8220;witnesses, cohorts&#8221; about him, &#8220;angels, powers, the
+unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This whole conception was developed by Browning from the single phrase in
+I Samuel: &#8220;And David came to Saul, and stood before him: and he loved him
+greatly.&#8221; In thus making David prophesy of an ideal which had not been
+evolved at his time, Browning indulges in what the biblical critic would
+call prophecy after the fact, and so throws himself in on the side of the
+mythical interpreters of the Bible.</p>
+
+<p>He has taken a historical narrative, embellished it poetically as in the
+imaginary accounts of the songs sung by David to Saul,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> and given it a
+philosophical content belonging on its objective side to the dawn of
+Christianity in the coming of Jesus himself and on its subjective side to
+his (the poet&#8217;s) own time&mdash;that is, the idea of internal instead of
+external revelation&mdash;one of the ideas about which has been waged the
+so-called conflict of Science and Religion as it was understood by some of
+the most prominent thinkers of the latter half of the century. In this,
+again, it will be seen that Browning was in the van of the thought of the
+century, and still more was he in the van in the psychological tinge which
+he gives to David&#8217;s experience. Professor William James himself could not
+better have portrayed a case of religious ecstasy growing out of genuine
+exaltation of thought than the poet has in David&#8217;s experience.</p>
+
+<p>This poem undoubtedly sheds many rays of light upon the feelings, at the
+time, of its writer. While he was a profound believer in the spiritual
+nature and needs of man, he was evidently not opposed to the contemporary
+methods of biblical criticism as applied to the prophecies of the Old
+Testament, for has he not himself worked in accord with the light such
+criticism had thrown upon the origin of prophecy? Furthermore, the poem is
+not only an instance of his belief in the supremacy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> of the human spirit,
+but it distinctly repudiates the Comtian ideal of a religion of humanity,
+and of an immortality existing only in the memory of others. The Comte
+philosophy growing out of a material conception of the universe and a
+product of scientific thought has been one of the strong influences
+through the whole of the nineteenth century in sociology and religion.
+While it has worked much good in developing a deeper interest in the
+social life of man, it has proved altogether unsatisfactory and barren as
+a religious ideal, though there are minds which seem to derive some sort
+of forlorn comfort from this religion of positivism&mdash;from such hopes as
+may be inspired by the worship of Humanity &#8220;as a continuity and solidarity
+in time&#8221; without &#8220;any special existence, more largely composed of the dead
+than of the living,&#8221; by the thought of an immortality in which we shall be
+reunited with the remembrance of our &#8220;grandsires&#8221; like Tyltyl and Mytyl in
+Maeterlinck&#8217;s &#8220;Blue Bird.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Here, as always, the poet throws in his weight on the side of the
+paramount worth of the individual, and of a conception of life which
+demands that the individual shall have a future world in which to overcome
+the flaws and imperfections incident to earthly life.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>Although, as I have tried to show, this poem undoubtedly bears witness to
+Browning&#8217;s awareness to the thought currents of the day, it is couched in
+a form so dramatic, and in a language so poetic, that it seems like a
+spontaneous outburst of belief in which feeling alone had played a part.
+Certainly, whatever thoughts upon the subject may have been stowed away in
+the subconscious regions of the poet&#8217;s mind, they well up here in a
+fountain of pure inspiration, carrying the thought forward on the wings of
+the poet&#8217;s own spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Poems reflecting several phases of the turmoil of religious opinion rife
+in mid-century England are &#8220;Christmas Eve&#8221; and &#8220;Easter Day.&#8221; Baffling they
+are, even misleading to any one who is desirous of finding out the exact
+attitude of the poet&#8217;s mind, for example, upon the rival doctrines of a
+Methodist parson and a German biblical critic.</p>
+
+<p>The Methodist Chapel and the German University might be considered as
+representative of the extremes of thought in the more or less prescribed
+realm of theology, which largely through the influence of the filtering in
+of scientific and philosophic thought had divided itself into many sects.</p>
+
+<p>Within the Church of England itself there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> were high church and low
+church, broad church and Latitudinarian, into whose different shades of
+opinion it is not needful to enter here. Outside of the Established Church
+were the numerous dissenters, including Congregationalists, Baptists,
+Quakers, Methodists, Swedenborgians, Unitarians, and numerous others.</p>
+
+<p>There was one broad line of division between the Established Church and
+the dissenting bodies. In the first was inherent the ancient principle of
+authority, while the principle of self-government in matters of faith
+guided all the dissenters in their search for the light.</p>
+
+<p>It is not surprising that with so many differing shades of opinion within
+the bosom of the Anglican Church it should, in the earlier half of the
+century, have lost its grip upon not only the people at large, but upon
+many of its higher intellects. The principle of authority seemed to be
+tottering to its fall. In this crisis the Roman Catholic Church exercised
+a peculiar fascination upon men of intellectual endowment who, fearing the
+direction in which their intellect might lead them, turned to that church
+where the principle of authority kept itself firmly rooted by summarily
+dismissing any one who might question<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> it. It is of interest to remember
+that at the date when this poem was written the Tractarian Movement, in
+which was conspicuous the Oxford group of men, had succeeded in carrying
+over four hundred clergymen and laity into the Catholic Church.</p>
+
+<p>Those who were unafraid followed the lead of German criticism and French
+materialism, but the large mass of common people found in Methodism the
+sort of religious guidance which it craved.</p>
+
+<p>To this sect has been attributed an unparalleled influence in the moral
+development of England. By rescuing multitudes from ignorance and from
+almost the degradation of beasts, and by fostering habits of industry and
+thrift, Methodism became a chief factor in building up a great,
+intelligent and industrious middle-class. Its influence has been felt even
+in the Established Church, and as its enthusiastic historians have pointed
+out, England might have suffered the political and religious convulsions
+inaugurated by the French Revolution if it had not been for the saving
+grace of Methodism.</p>
+
+<p>Appealing at first to the poor and lowly, suffering wrong and persecution
+with its founder, Wesley, it was so flexible in its constitution that
+after the death of Wesley it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> broadened out and differentiated in a way
+that made it adaptable to very varied human needs. In consequence of this
+it finally became a genuine power in the Church and State of Great
+Britain.</p>
+
+<p>The poem &#8220;Christmas Eve&#8221; becomes much more understandable when these facts
+about Methodism are borne in mind&mdash;facts which were evidently in the
+poet&#8217;s mind, although the poem itself has the character of a symbolic
+rather than a personal utterance. The speaker might be regarded as a type
+of the religious conscience of England. In spite of whatever direct
+visions of the divine such a type of conscience may gain through the
+contemplation of nature and the revelations of the human heart, its
+relations to the past cause it to feel the need of some sectarian form of
+religion&mdash;a sort of inherited need to be orthodox in one form or another.
+This religious conscience has its artistic side; it can clothe its inborn
+religious instincts in exquisite imaginative vision. Also, it has its
+clear-sighted reasoning side. This is able unerringly to put its finger
+upon any flaw of doctrine or reasoning in the forms of religion it
+contemplates. Hence, Catholic doctrine, which was claiming the allegiance
+of those who were willing to put their troublesome <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>intellects to sleep
+and accept authority where religion was concerned, does not satisfy this
+keen analyzer. Nor yet is it able to see any religious reality in such a
+myth of Christ rehabilitated as an ethical prophet as the G&ouml;ttingen
+professor constructs in a manner so reminiscent of a passage in Strauss&#8217;s
+&#8220;Life of Jesus,&#8221; where he is describing the opinions of the rationalists&#8217;
+school of criticism, that a comparison with that passage is enlightening.</p>
+
+<p>Having swept away completely the supernatural basis of religion, the
+rationalist is able still to conceive of Jesus as a divine Messenger, a
+special favorite and charge of the Deity:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;He had implanted in him by God the natural conditions only of that
+which he was ultimately to become, and his realization of this destiny
+was the result of his own spontaneity. His admirable wisdom he
+acquired by the judicious application of his intellectual powers and
+the conscientious use of all the aids within his reach; his moral
+greatness, by the zealous culture of his moral dispositions, the
+restraint of his sensual inclinations and passions, and a scrupulous
+obedience to the voice of his conscience; and on these alone rested
+all that was exalted in his personality, all that was encouraging in
+his example.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>The difficulty to this order of mind of the direct personal revelation
+lies in the fact that it is convincing only to those who experience<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> it,
+having no basis in authority, and may even for them lose its force.</p>
+
+<p>What then is the conclusion forced upon this English religious conscience?
+Simply this: that, though failing both from the intellectual and the
+&aelig;sthetic standpoint, the dissenting view was the only religious view of
+the time possessing any genuine vitality. It represented the progressive,
+democratic religious force which was then in England bringing religion
+into the lives of the people with a positiveness long lost to the Anglican
+Church. The religious conscience of England was growing through this
+Methodist movement. This is why the speaker of the poem chooses at last
+that form of worship which he finds in the little chapel.</p>
+
+<p>While no one can doubt that the exalted mysticism based upon feeling, and
+the large tolerance of the poem, reflect most nearly the poet&#8217;s personal
+attitude, on the other hand it is made clear that in his opinion the
+dissenting bodies possessed the forms of religious orthodoxy most potent
+at the time for good.</p>
+
+<p>In &#8220;Easter Day,&#8221; the doubts and fears which have racked the hearts and
+minds of hundreds and thousands of individuals, as the result of the
+increase of scientific knowledge and biblical criticism are given more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+personal expression. The discussion turns principally upon the relation of
+the finite to the Infinite, a philosophical problem capable of much
+hair-splitting controversy, solved here in keeping with the prevailing
+thought of the century&mdash;namely, that the finite is relative and that this
+relativity is the proof of the Infinite.</p>
+
+<p>The boldness of this statement, one such as might be found in the pages of
+Spencer, is by Browning elaborated with pictorial and emotional power.
+Only by a marvelous vision is the truth brought home to the speaker that
+the beauties and joys of earth are not all-sufficient, but that they are
+in the poet&#8217;s speech but partial beauty, though through this very
+limitation they become &#8220;a pledge of beauty in its plenitude,&#8221; gleams
+&#8220;meant to sting with hunger for full light.&#8221; It is not, however, until
+this see-er of visions perceives the highest gleam of earth that he is
+able to realize through the spiritual voice of his vision that the nature
+of the Infinite is in its essence Love, the supreme manifestation of which
+was symbolized in the death and resurrection of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>This revelation is nevertheless rendered null by the man&#8217;s conviction that
+the vision was merely such &#8220;stuff as dreams are made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> on.&#8221; At the end as
+at the beginning he finds it hard to be a Christian.</p>
+
+<p>His vision, which thus symbolizes his own course of emotionalized
+reasoning, brings hope but not conviction. Like the type in &#8220;Christmas
+Eve,&#8221; conviction can come to him only through a belief in supernatural
+revelation. He is evidently a man of broad intellectual endowment, who
+cannot, as the Tractarians did, lay his mind asleep, and rest in the
+authority of a church, nor yet can he be satisfied with the unconscious
+anthropomorphism of the sectarian. He doubts his own reasoning attempts to
+formulate religious doctrines, he doubts even the revelations of his own
+mystic states of consciousness; hence there is nothing for him but to
+flounder on through life as best he can, hoping, fearing, doubting, as
+many a serious mind has done owing to the nineteenth-century reaction
+against the supernatural dogmas of Christianity. Like others of his ilk,
+he probably stayed in the Anglican Church and weakened it through his
+latitudinarianisms.</p>
+
+<p>A study in religious consciousness akin to this is that of Bishop
+Blougram. Here we have not a generalized type as in &#8220;Christmas Eve,&#8221; nor
+an imaginary individual as in &#8220;Easter Day,&#8221; but an actual study of a real<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+man, it being no secret that Cardinal Wiseman was the inspiration for the
+poem.</p>
+
+<p>Wiseman&#8217;s influence as a Catholic in the Tractarian movement was a
+powerful one, and in the poet&#8217;s dissection of his psychology an attempt is
+made to present the reasoning by means of which he made his appeal to less
+independent thinkers. With faith as the basis of religion, doubt serves as
+a moral spur, since the will must exercise itself in keeping doubt
+underfoot. Browning, himself, might agree that aspiration toward faith was
+one of the tests of its truth, he might also consider doubt as a spur to
+greater aspiration, but these ideals would connote something different to
+him from what he makes them mean to Blougram. The poet&#8217;s aspiration would
+be toward a belief in Omniscient Love and Power, his doubts would grow out
+of his inability to make this ideal tally with the sin and evil he beholds
+in life. Blougram&#8217;s consciousness is on a lower plane. His aspiration is
+to believe in the dogmas of the Church, his doubts arise from an
+intellectual fear that the dogmas may not be true. Where Browning seems to
+miss comprehension of such a nature as Blougram&#8217;s is in failing to
+recognize that on his own plane of consciousness genuine feeling and the
+perception of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> beauty play at least as large a part in the basis of his
+faith as utilitarian and instinctive reasoning do. While this poem shows
+in its references to the scientific theories of the origin of morals and
+its allusions to Strauss, as well as in the indirect portrayal of
+Gigadibs, the man emancipated from the Church, how entirely familiar the
+poet was with the currents of religious and scientific thought, it falls
+short as a fair analysis of a man who is acknowledged to have wielded a
+tremendous religious influence upon Englishmen of the caliber of Cardinal
+Newman, Kingsley, Arnold, and others.</p>
+
+<p>If we leave out of account its connection with a special individual, the
+poem stands, however, as a delightful study of a type in which is depicted
+in passingly clever fashion methods of reasoning compounded of tantalizing
+gleams of truth and darkening sophistication.</p>
+
+<p>The poem which shows most completely the effect of contemporary biblical
+criticism on the poet is &#8220;A Death in the Desert.&#8221; It has been said to be
+an attempt to meet the destructive criticism of Strauss. The setting of
+the poem is wonderfully beautiful, while the portrayal of the mystical
+quality of John&#8217;s reasoning is so instinct with religious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> feeling that it
+must be a wary reader indeed who does not come from the reading of this
+poem with the conviction that here, at least, Browning has declared
+himself unflinchingly on the side of supernatural Christianity in the face
+of the battering rams of criticism and the projectiles of science.</p>
+
+<p>But if he be a wary reader, he will discover that the argument for
+supernaturalism only amounts to this&mdash;and it is put in the mouth of John,
+who had in his youth been contemporary with Christ&mdash;namely, that miracles
+had been performed when only by means of them faith was possible, though
+miracles were probably not what those who believed in them thought they
+were. Here is the gist of his defence of the supernatural:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;I say, that as a babe, you feed awhile,</span><br />
+Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself,<br />
+So, minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth:<br />
+When they can eat, babes&#8217;-nurture is withdrawn.<br />
+I fed the babe whether it would or no:<br />
+I bid the boy or feed himself or starve.<br />
+I cried once, &#8216;That ye may believe in Christ,<br />
+Behold this blind man shall receive his sight!&#8217;<br />
+I cry now, &#8216;Urgest thou, <i>for I am shrewd<br />
+And smile at stories how John&#8217;s word could cure&mdash;<br />
+Repeat that miracle and take my faith</i>?&#8217;<br />
+I say, that miracle was duly wrought<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>When save for it no faith was possible.<br />
+Whether a change were wrought in the shows o&#8217; the world,<br />
+Whether the change came from our minds which see<br />
+Of shows o&#8217; the world so much as and no more<br />
+Than God wills for his purpose,&mdash;(what do I<br />
+See now, suppose you, there where you see rock<br />
+Round us?)&mdash;I know not; such was the effect,<br />
+So faith grew, making void more miracles,<br />
+Because too much they would compel, not help.<br />
+I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ<br />
+Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee<br />
+All questions in the earth and out of it,<br />
+And has so far advanced thee to be wise.<br />
+Wouldst thou improve this to re-prove the proved?<br />
+In life&#8217;s mere minute, with power to use the proof,<br />
+Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung?<br />
+Thou hast it; use it and forthwith, or die!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The important truth as seen by John&#8217;s dying eyes is that faith in a
+beautiful ideal has been born in the human soul. Whether the accounts of
+the exact means by which this faith arose were literally true is of little
+importance, the faith itself is no less God-given, as another passage will
+make clear:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect<br />
+He could not, what he knows now, know at first;<br />
+What he considers that he knows to-day,<br />
+Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown;<br />
+Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns<br />
+Because he lives, which is to be a man,<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>Set to instruct himself by his past self;<br />
+First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn,<br />
+Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind,<br />
+Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.<br />
+God&#8217;s gift was that man should conceive of truth<br />
+And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake<br />
+As midway help till he reach fact indeed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The defence of Christianity in this poem reminds one very strongly of the
+theology of Schleiermacher, a r&eacute;sum&eacute; of which the poet might have found in
+Strauss&#8217;s &#8220;Life of Jesus.&#8221; Although Schleiermacher accepted and even went
+beyond the negative criticism of the rationalists against the doctrines of
+the Church, he sought to retain the essential aspects of positive
+Christianity. He starts out from the consciousness of the Christian, &#8220;from
+that internal experience resulting to the individual from his connection
+with the Christian community, and he thus obtains a material which, as its
+basis of feeling, is more flexible and to which it is easier to give
+dialectically a form that satisfies science.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Again, &#8220;If we owe to him [Jesus] the continual strengthening of the
+consciousness of God within us, this consciousness must have existed in
+him in absolute strength, so that it or God in the form of the
+consciousness was the only operative force within him.&#8221; In other words, in
+Jesus was the supreme<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> manifestation of God in human consciousness. This
+truth, first grasped by means which seemed miraculous, is finally
+recognized in man&#8217;s developing consciousness as a consummation brought
+about by natural means. John&#8217;s reasoning in the poem can lead to no other
+conclusion than this.</p>
+
+<p>Schleiermacher&#8217;s theology has, of course, been objected to on the ground
+that if this incarnation of God was possible in one man, there is no
+reason why it should not frequently be possible. This is the orthodox
+objection, and it is voiced in the comment added by &#8220;One&#8221; at the end of
+the poem showing the weakness of John&#8217;s argument from the strictly
+orthodox point of view.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the miracles being natural events supernaturally
+interpreted&mdash;that is an explanation familiar to the biblical critic, and
+one which the psychologist of to-day is ready to support with numberless
+proofs and analyses. How much this poem owes to hints derived from
+Strauss&#8217;s book is further illustrated by the &#8220;Glossa of Theotypas,&#8221; which
+is borrowed from Origen, whose theory is referred to by Strauss in his
+Introduction as follows: &#8220;Origen attributes a threefold meaning to the
+Scriptures, corresponding with his distribution of the human being into
+three<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> parts, the liberal sense answering to the body, the moral to the
+soul, and the mystical to the spirit.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, the poem appears to be influenced more by the actual
+contents of Strauss&#8217;s book than to be deliberately directed against his
+thought, for John&#8217;s own reasoning when his feelings are in abeyance might
+be deduced from more than one passage in this work wherein are passed in
+review the conclusions of divers critics of the naturalist and rationalist
+schools of thought.</p>
+
+<p>The poem &#8220;An Epistle&#8221; purports to give a nearly contemporary opinion by an
+Arab physician upon the miracle of the raising of Lazarus. We have here,
+on the one hand, the Arab&#8217;s natural explanation of the miracle as an
+epileptic trance prolonged some three days, and Lazarus&#8217;s interpretation
+of his cure as a supernatural event. Though absolutely skeptical, the Arab
+cannot but be impressed with the beliefs of Lazarus, because of their
+revelation of God as a God of Love. Thus Browning brings out the power of
+the truth in the underlying ideas of Christianity, whatever skepticism may
+be felt as to the letter of it.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of the trance upon the nature of Lazarus is paralleled to-day
+by accounts,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> given by various persons, of their sensations when they
+have sunk into unconsciousness nigh unto death. I remember reading of a
+case in which a man described his feeling of entire indifference as to the
+relations of life, his joy in a sense of freedom and ineffable beauty
+toward which he seemed to be flying through space, and his disinclination
+to be resuscitated, a process which his spirit was watching from its
+heights with fear lest his friends should bring him back to earth. This
+higher sort of consciousness seems to have evolved in some people to-day
+without the intervention of such an experience as that of Lazarus or one
+such as that of the above subject of the Society for Psychical Research.</p>
+
+<p>In describing Lazarus to have reached such an outlook upon life, Browning
+again ranges himself with the most advanced psychological thought of the
+century. Hear William James: &#8220;The existence of mystical states absolutely
+overthrows the pretension of non-mystical states to be the sole and
+ultimate dictators of what we may believe. As a rule, mystical states
+merely add a supersensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data of
+consciousness. They are excitements like the emotions of love or ambition,
+gifts to our spirit by means<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> of which facts already objectively before
+us fall into a new expressiveness and make a new connection with our
+active life. They do not contradict these facts as such, or deny anything
+that our senses have immediately seized. It is the rationalistic critic
+rather who plays the part of denier in the controversy, and his denials
+have no strength, for there never can be a state of facts to which new
+meaning may not truthfully be added, provided the mind ascend to a more
+enveloping point of view. It must always remain an open question whether
+mystical states may not possibly be such superior points of view, windows
+through which the mind looks out upon a more extensive and inclusive
+world. The difference of the views seen from the different mystical
+windows need not prevent us from entertaining this supposition. The wider
+world would in that case prove to have a mixed constitution like that of
+this world, that is all. It would have its celestial and its infernal
+regions, its tempting and its saving moments, its valid experiences and
+its counterfeit ones, just as our world has them; but it would be a wider
+world all the same. We should have to use its experiences by selecting and
+subordinating and substituting just as is our custom in this ordinary
+naturalistic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> world; we should be liable to error just as we are now; yet
+the counting in of that wider world of meanings, and the serious dealing
+with it, might, in spite of all the perplexity, be indispensable stages in
+our approach to the final fulness of the truth.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The vision of Lazarus belongs to the beatific realm, and the naturalistic
+Arab has a longing for similar strange vision, though he calls it a
+madman&#8217;s, for&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too&mdash;<br />
+So, through the thunder comes a human voice<br />
+Saying, &#8216;O heart I made, a heart beats here!<br />
+Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!<br />
+Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,<br />
+But love I gave thee, with myself to love,<br />
+And thou must love me who have died for thee.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A survey of Browning&#8217;s contributions to the theological differences of the
+mid-century would not be complete without some reference to &#8220;Caliban&#8221; and
+&#8220;Childe Roland.&#8221; In the former, the absurdities of anthropomorphism, of
+the God conceived in the likeness of man, are presented with dramatic and
+ironical force, but, at the same time, is shown the aspiration to
+something beyond, which has carried dogma through all the centuries,
+forward to ever purer and more spiritual conceptions of the absolute. In
+the second, though it be a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> purely romantic ballad, there seems to be
+symbolized the scientific knight-errant of the century, who, with belief
+and faith completely annihilated by the science which allows for no realm
+of knowledge beyond its own experimental reach, yet considers life worth
+living. Despite the complex interpretations which have issued from the
+oracular tripods of Browning Societies, one cannot read the last lines of
+this poem&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,<br />
+And blew, &#8216;<i>Childe Roland to the dark Tower came</i>&#8217;&#8221;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>without thinking of the splendid courage in the face of disillusionment of
+such men of the century as Huxley, Tyndall or Clifford.</p>
+
+<p>When we ask, where is Browning in all this diversity of theological
+opinion? we can only answer that beyond an ever-present undercurrent of
+religious aspiration there is no possibility of pinning the poet to any
+given dogmas. Everywhere we feel the dramatic artist. In &#8220;Paracelsus&#8221; the
+philosophy of life was that of the artist whose adoration finds its
+completion in beauty and joy; now the poet himself is the artist
+experiencing as Aprile did, this beauty and joy in a boundless sympathy
+with many forms of mystical religious ecstasy. Every one of these poems
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>presents a conflict between the doubts born of some phase of theological
+controversy and the exaltation of moments or periods of ecstatic vision,
+and though nowhere is dogmatic truth asserted with positiveness,
+everywhere we feel a mystic sympathy with the moving power of religious
+aspiration, a sympathy which belongs to a form of consciousness perhaps
+more inclusive than the religious&mdash;namely, a poetic consciousness, able at
+once to sympathize with the content and to present the forms of mystic
+vision belonging to various phases of human consciousness.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+<p class="title">THE CENTURY&#8217;S END: PROMISE OF PEACE</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Passing</span> onward from this mid-century phase of Browning&#8217;s interest in what
+I have called the battle of the mind and the spirit, we find him in his
+later poems taking up the subject in its broader aspects, more as he
+treated it in &#8220;Paracelsus,&#8221; yet with a marked difference in temper. God is
+no longer conceived of merely as a divine creator, joying in the wonder
+and beauty of his creations. The ideal of the artist has been modified by
+the observation of the thinker and the feeling induced by human rather
+than by artistic emotion. Life&#8217;s experiences have shown to the more
+humanly conscious Browning that the problem of evil is not one to be so
+easily dismissed. The scientist may point out that evil is but lack of
+development, and the lover and artist may exult when he sees the wonderful
+processes of nature and mind carrying forward development until he can
+picture a time when the evil shall become null and void, but the human,
+feeling being sees the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> misery and the unloveliness of evil. It does not
+satisfy him to know that it is lack of development or the outcome of lack
+of development, nor yet that it will grow less as time goes on he ponders
+the problem, &#8220;why is evil permitted, how is it to be harmonized with the
+existence of a universe planned upon a scheme which he believes to be the
+outcome of a source all-powerful and all-loving!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>About this problem and its corollary, the conception of the infinite,
+Browning&#8217;s latter-day thought revolves as it did in his middle years about
+the basis of religious belief.</p>
+
+<p>It is one of the strange freaks of criticism that many admirers of
+Browning&#8217;s earlier work have failed to see the importance of his later
+poems, especially &#8220;Ferishtah&#8217;s Fancies,&#8221; and &#8220;The Parleyings,&#8221; not only as
+expressions of the poet&#8217;s own spiritual growth, but as showing his mental
+grasp of the problems which the advance of nineteenth-century scientific
+thought brought to the fore in the last days of the century.</p>
+
+<p>The date at which various critics have declared that Browning ceased to
+write poetry might be considered an index of the time when that critic&#8217;s
+powers became atrophied. No less a person than Edmund Gosse is of the
+opinion that since 1868 the poet&#8217;s books were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> chiefly valuable as keeping
+alive popular interest in him, and as leading fresh generations of readers
+to what he had already published. Fortunately it has long been admitted
+that Homer sometimes nods, though not with such awful effect as was said
+to attend the nods of Jove. Hence, in spite of Mr. Gosse&#8217;s undoubted
+eminence as a critic, we may dare to assume that in this particular
+instance he fell into the ancient and distinguished trick of nodding.</p>
+
+<p>If Mr. Gosse were right, it would practically put on a par with a mere
+advertising scheme many poems which have now become household favorites.
+Take, for example, &#8220;Herv&eacute; Riel.&#8221; Think of the blue-eyed Breton hero whom
+all the world has learned to love through Browning, tolerated simply as an
+index finger to &#8220;The Pied Piper of Hamelin.&#8221; Take, too, such poems, as
+&#8220;Donald.&#8221; This man&#8217;s dastardly sportsmanship is so vividly portrayed that
+it has the power to arouse strong emotion in strong men, who have been
+known literally to break down in the middle of it through excess of
+feeling; &#8220;Ivan Ivanovitch,&#8221; in which is embodied such fear and horror that
+weak hearts cannot stand the strain of hearing it read; the story of the
+dog Tray, who rescued a drowning doll with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> the same promptitude as he
+did a drowning child&mdash;at the relation of whose noble deeds the eyes of
+little children grow eager with excitement and sympathy. And where is
+there in any poet&#8217;s work a more vivid bit of tragedy than &#8220;A Forgiveness?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And would not an unfillable gap be left in the ranks of our friends of the
+imaginative world if Balaustion were blotted out?&mdash;the exquisite lyric
+girl, brave, tender and with a mind in which wisdom and wit are fair play
+fellows.</p>
+
+<p>As Carlyle might say, &#8220;Verily, verily, Mr. Gosse, thou hast out-Homered
+Homer, and thy nod hath taken upon itself very much the semblance of a
+snore.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>These and many others which might be mentioned since the date when Mr.
+Gosse autocratically put up the bars to the poet&#8217;s genius are now
+universally accepted. There are others, however, such as &#8220;The Red Cotton
+Night-cap Country,&#8221; &#8220;The Inn Album,&#8221; &#8220;Aristophanes&#8217; Apology,&#8221; &#8220;Fifine at
+the Fair,&#8221; which are liable at any time to attacks from atrophied critics,
+and among these are the groups of poems which are to form the center of
+our present discussion.</p>
+
+<p>Without particularizing either critics or criticism it may be said that
+criticism of these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> poems divides itself into the usual three
+branches&mdash;one which objects to their philosophy, one which objects to
+their art, one which finds them difficult of comprehension at all. This
+last criticism may easily be disposed of by admitting it is in part true.
+The mind whose highest reaches of poetic inspiration are ministered unto
+by such simple and easily understandable lyrics as &#8220;Twinkle, twinkle,
+little star,&#8221; might not at once grasp the significance of the Parleying
+with George Bubb Dodington. Indeed, it may be surmised that some minds
+might sing upon the starry heights with Hegel and fathom the equivalence
+of being and non-being, and yet be led into a slough of despond by this
+same cantankerous George.</p>
+
+<p>But a poetical slough of despond may be transfigured in the twinkling of
+an eye&mdash;after a proper amount of study and hard thinking&mdash;into an elevated
+plateau with prospects upon every side, grand or terrible or smiling.</p>
+
+<p>Are we never to feel spurred to any poetical pleasure more vigorous than
+dilly-dallying with Keats while we feast our eyes upon the wideness of the
+seas? or lazily floating in a lotus land with Tennyson, perhaps, among the
+meadows of the Musketaquid, in canoes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> with silken cushions? Beauty and
+peace are the reward of such poetical pleasures. They fall upon the spirit
+like the &#8220;sweet sound that breathes upon a bank of violets, stealing and
+giving odor,&#8221; but shall we never return from the land where it is always
+afternoon? Is it only in such a land as this that we realize the true
+power of emotion? Rather does it conduce to the slumber of emotion, for
+progress is the law of feeling as it is the law of life, and many times we
+feel&mdash;yes, feel&mdash;with tremendous rushes of enthusiasm like climbing
+Matterhorns with great iron nails in our shoes, with historical and
+arch&aelig;ological and philosophical Alpen-stocks in our hands, and when we
+reach the summit what unsuspected beauties become ours!</p>
+
+<p>Then let us hear no more of the critic who wishes Browning had ceased to
+write in 1868 or at any other date. It may be said of him, not as of
+Whitman, &#8220;he who reads my book touches a man,&#8221; but &#8220;he who reads my poems
+from start to finish grasps the life and thought of a century.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There will be no exaggeration in claiming that these two series of poems
+form the keystone to Browning&#8217;s whole work. They are like a final
+synthesis of the problems of existence which he has previously portrayed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+and analyzed from myriad points of view in his dramatic presentation of
+character and his dramatic interpretations of spiritual moods.</p>
+
+<p>In &#8220;Pauline,&#8221; before the poet&#8217;s personality became more or less merged in
+that of his characters, we obtain a direct glimpse of the poet&#8217;s own
+artistic temperament, and may literally acquaint ourselves with those
+qualities which were to be a large influence in moulding his work.</p>
+
+<p>As described by himself, the poet of &#8220;Pauline&#8221; was</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Made up of an intensest life,<br />
+Of a most clear idea of consciousness<br />
+Of self, distinct from all its qualities,<br />
+From all affections, passions, feelings, powers;<br />
+And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all:<br />
+But linked in me to self-supremacy,<br />
+Existing as a center to all things,<br />
+Most potent to create and rule and call<br />
+Upon all things to minister to it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This sense of an over-consciousness is the mark of an objective poet&mdash;one
+who sympathizes with all the emotions and aspirations of
+humanity&mdash;interprets their actions through the light of this sympathy, and
+at the same time keeps his own individuality distinct.</p>
+
+<p>The poet of this poem discovers that he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> can no longer lose himself with
+enthusiasm in any phase of life; but what does that mean to a soul
+constituted as his? It means that the way has been cleared for the birth
+of that greater, broader love of the fully developed artist soul which,
+while entering into sympathy with all phases of life, finds its true
+complement only in an ideal of absolute Love.</p>
+
+<p>This picture of the artist aspiring toward the absolute by means of his
+large human sympathy may be supplemented by the theory of man&#8217;s relation
+to the universe involved in &#8220;Paracelsus&#8221; as we have seen.</p>
+
+<p>From this point in his work, Browning, like the Hindu Brahma, becomes
+manifest not as himself, but in his creations. The poet whose portrait is
+painted for us in &#8220;Pauline&#8221; is the same poet who sympathetically presents
+a whole world of human experiences to us, and the philosopher whose
+portrait is drawn in &#8220;Paracelsus&#8221; is the same who interprets these human
+experiences in the light of the great life theories therein presented.</p>
+
+<p>But as the creations of Brahma return into himself, so the human
+experiences Browning has entered into artistic sympathy with return to
+enrich his completed view of the problems of life, when, like his own
+Rabbi Ben Ezra, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> reaches the last of life for which the first was
+planned in these &#8220;Fancies&#8221; and &#8220;Parleyings.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Though these two groups of poems undoubtedly express the poet&#8217;s own mature
+conclusions, they yet preserve the dramatic form. Several things are
+gained in this way: First, the poems are saved from didacticism, for the
+poet expresses his opinions as an individual, and not in his own person as
+a seer, trying to implant his theories in the minds of disciples. Second,
+variety is given and the mind stimulated by having opposite points of view
+presented, while the thought is infused with a certain amount of emotional
+force through the heat of argument.</p>
+
+<p>It has frequently been objected, not only of these poems, but upon general
+grounds, that philosophical and ethical problems are not fit subjects for
+treatment in poetry. There is one point which the critic of &aelig;sthetics
+seems in danger of never realizing&mdash;namely, that the law of evolution is
+differentiation, in art as well as in cosmic, organic, and social life. It
+is just as prejudiced and unforeseeing in these days to limit poetry to
+this or that kind of a subject, or to say that nothing is dramatic which
+does not deal with immediate action, as it would have been for Homer to
+declare that no poem would ever be worthy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> the name that did not contain
+a catalogue of ships.</p>
+
+<p>These facts exist! We have dramas dealing merely with action, dramas in
+which character development is of prime importance; dramas wherein action
+and character are entirely synchronous; and those in which the action
+means more than appears upon the surface, like Hauptmann&#8217;s &#8220;Sunken Bell,&#8221;
+or Ibsen&#8217;s &#8220;Master Builder&#8221;; then why not dramas of thought and dramas of
+mood when the brain and heart become the stage of action instead of an
+actual stage.</p>
+
+<p>Surely such an extension of the possibilities of dramatic art is a
+development quite natural to the intellectual ferment of the nineteenth
+century. As the man in &#8220;Half Rome&#8221; says, &#8220;Facts are facts and lie not, and
+the question, &#8216;How came that purse the poke o&#8217; you?&#8217; admits of no reply.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>By using the dramatic form, the poet has furthermore been enabled to give
+one a deep sense of the characteristics peculiar to the century. The
+latter half of Victorian England in its thought phases lives just as
+surely in these poems as Renaissance Italy in its art phases in &#8220;Fra Lippo
+Lippi,&#8221; &#8220;Andrea del Sarto,&#8221; and the rest; and this is true though the
+first series is cast in the form of Persian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> fables and the second in the
+form of &#8220;Parleyings&#8221; with worthies of past centuries.</p>
+
+<p>It may be worth while for the benefit of the reader not thoroughly
+familiar with these later poems to pass quickly in review the problems in
+them upon which Browning bends his poet&#8217;s insight.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing bears upon the grounds of moral action more disastrously than
+blind fatalism, and while there have been many evil forms of this doctrine
+in the past there has probably been none worse than the modern form,
+because it seems to have sanction in the scientific doctrines of the
+conservation of energy, the persistence of heredity, and the survival of
+the fittest. Even the wise and the thoughtful with wills atrophied by
+scientific phases of fatalism allow themselves to drift upon what they
+call the laws of development, possessing evidently no realizing sense that
+the will of man, whether it be in the last analysis absolutely free or
+not, is a prime factor in the working of these laws. Such people will
+hesitate, therefore, to throw in their voices upon either side in the
+solution of great national problems, because, things being bound to follow
+the laws of development, what matters a single voice! Such arguments were
+frequently heard among the wise in our own country during the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> Cuban and
+Philippine campaigns. Upon this attitude of mind the poet gives his
+opinion in the first of &#8220;Ferishtah&#8217;s Fancies,&#8221; &#8220;The Eagle.&#8221; It is a strong
+plea for the exercise of those human impulses that lead to action. The
+will to serve the world is the true force from God. Every man, though he
+be the last link in a chain of causes over which he had no control, can,
+at least, have a determining influence upon the direction in which the
+next link shall be forged. Ferishtah appears upon the scene, himself, a
+fatalist, leaving himself wholly in God&#8217;s hands, until he is taught by the
+dream God sent him that man&#8217;s part is to act as he saw the eagle act,
+succoring the helpless, not to play the part of the helpless birdlings.</p>
+
+<p>Another phase of the same thought is brought out in &#8220;A Camel Driver,&#8221;
+where the discussion turns upon punishment. The point is, if, as Ferishtah
+declares, the sinner is not to be punished eternally, then why should man
+trouble himself to punish him? Universalist doctrines are here put into
+the mouth of Ferishtah, and not a few modern philanthropists would agree
+with Ferishtah&#8217;s questioners that punishment for sins (the manifestations
+of inherited tendencies for which the sinners are not responsible) is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> no
+longer admissible. Ferishtah&#8217;s answer amounts to this. That no matter what
+causes for beneficent ends may be visible to the Divine mind in the
+allowance of the existence of sin, nor yet the fact that Divine love
+demands that punishment shall not be eternal; man must regard sin simply
+from the human point of view as absolute evil, and must will to work for
+its annihilation. It follows then that the punishing of a sinner is the
+means by which he may be taught to overcome the sin. There is the added
+thought, also, that the suffering of the conscience over the subtler sins
+which go unpunished is all the hell one needs.</p>
+
+<p>Another doctrine upon which the nineteenth-century belief in progress as
+the law of life has set its seal is that of the pursuit of happiness, or
+the striving for the greatest good of the whole number in which oneself is
+not to be excluded. With this doctrine Browning shows himself in full
+sympathy in &#8220;Two Camels,&#8221; wherein Ferishtah contends that only through the
+development of individual happiness and the experiencing of many forms of
+joyousness can one help others to happiness and joyousness, while in &#8220;Plot
+Culture&#8221; the enjoyment of human emotion as a means of developing the soul
+is emphasized.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>The relation of good and evil in their broader aspects occupy the poet&#8217;s
+attention in others of this group. Nineteenth-century thought brought
+about a readjustment of these relations. Good and evil as absolutely
+definable entities gave place to the doctrine that good and evil are
+relative terms, a phrase which we sometimes forget must be understood in
+two ways: first, that good and evil are relative to the state of society
+in which they exist. What may be good according to the ethics of a Fejee
+Islander would not hold in the civilized society of to-day. This is the
+evil of lack of development which in the long run becomes less. On the
+other hand, there is the evil of suffering and pain which it is more
+difficult to reconcile with the idea of omnipotent power. In &#8220;Mihrab
+Shah,&#8221; Browning gives a solution of this problem in consonance with the
+idea that were it not for evil we should not have learned how to
+appreciate the good, to work for it, and, in doing so, bring about
+progress.</p>
+
+<p>To his pupil, worried over this problem, Ferishtah points out that evil in
+the form of bodily suffering has given rise to the beautiful sentiments of
+pity and sympathy. Having proved in this way that good really grows out of
+evil, there is still the query, shall evil<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> be encouraged in order that
+good may be evolved? &#8220;No!&#8221; Ferishtah declares, man bound by man&#8217;s
+conditions is obliged to estimate as &#8220;fair or foul right, wrong, good,
+evil, what man&#8217;s faculty adjudges as such,&#8221; therefore the man will do all
+he can to relieve the suffering or poor Mihrab Shah with a fig plaster.</p>
+
+<p>The final answers, then, which Browning gives to the ethical problems
+which grew out of the acceptance of modern scientific doctrines are, in
+brief, that man shall use that will-power of which he feels himself
+possessed&mdash;the power really distinguishing him from the brute creation&mdash;in
+working against whatever appears to him to be evil; while that good for
+which he shall work is the greatest happiness of all.</p>
+
+<p>In the remaining poems of the group we have the poet&#8217;s mature word upon
+the philosophical doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, a doctrine
+which received the most elaborate demonstration from Herbert Spencer in
+many directions. It is insisted upon in &#8220;Cherries,&#8221; &#8220;The Sun,&#8221; in &#8220;A Bean
+Stripe also Apple Eating,&#8221; and especially in that remarkable poem, &#8220;A
+Pillar at Sebzevar.&#8221; That knowledge fails is the burden of these poems.
+Knowledge the golden is but lacquered ignorance, as gain to be
+mistrusted.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> Curiously enough, this contention of Browning&#8217;s has been the
+cause of most of the criticisms against him as a thinker, yet the deepest
+thinkers of to-day as well as many in the past have held the opinion in
+some form or another that the intellect was unable to solve the mysterious
+problems of the universe. Even the metaphysicians who build their unstable
+air castles on <i>&agrave; priori</i> ideas declare these ideas cannot be matters of
+mere intellectual perception, but must be intuitions of the higher reason.
+
+Browning, however, does not rest in the mere assertion that the intellect
+fails. From this truth, so disconcerting to many, he draws immense
+comfort. Though intellectual knowledge be mistrusted as gain, it is not to
+be mistrusted as means to gain, for through its very failure it becomes a
+promise of greater things.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Friend,&#8221; quoth Ferishtah in &#8220;A Pillar of Sebzevar,&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;As gain&mdash;mistrust it! Nor as means to gain:<br />
+Lacquer we learn by: cast in firing-pot,<br />
+We learn&mdash;when what seemed ore assayed proves dross<br />
+Surelier true gold&#8217;s worth, guess how purity<br />
+I&#8217; the lode were precious could one light on ore<br />
+Clarified up to test of crucible.<br />
+The prize is in the process: knowledge means<br />
+Ever-renewed assurance by defeat<br />
+That victory is somehow still to reach.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>For men with minds of the type of Spencer&#8217;s this negative assurance of the
+Infinite is sufficient, but human beings as a rule will not rest satisfied
+with such cold abstractions. Though Job said thousands of years ago, &#8220;Who
+by searching can find out God,&#8221; mankind still continues to search. They
+long to know something of the nature of the divine as well as to be
+assured of its existence. In this very act of searching Browning declares
+the divine becomes most directly manifest.</p>
+
+<p>From the earliest times of which we have any record man has been aspiring
+toward God. Many times has he thought he had found him, but with enlarged
+perceptions he discovered later that what he had found was only God&#8217;s
+image built up out of his own human experiences.</p>
+
+<p>This search of man for the divine is described with great power and
+originality in the Fancy called &#8220;The Sun,&#8221; under the symbol of the man who
+seeks the prime Giver that he may give thanks where it is due for a
+palatable fig. This search for God, Browning calls love, meaning by that
+the moving, aspiring force of the whole universe in its multifarious
+manifestations, from the love that goes forth in thanks for benefits
+received, through the aspiration of the artist toward beauty, of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+lover toward human sympathy, even of the scientist toward knowledge, to
+the lover of humanity like Ferishtah, who declares, &#8220;I know nothing save
+that love I can, boundlessly, endlessly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The poet argues from this that if mankind has with ever-increasing fervor
+aspired toward a God of Love, and has ever developed toward broader
+conceptions of human love, it is only reasonable to infer that in his
+nature God has some attribute which corresponds to human love, though it
+transcend our most exalted imagining of it.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the century a book was written in America in which an
+argument similar to this was used to prove the existence of God. This book
+was &#8220;Through Nature to God,&#8221; by John Fiske, whose earlier work, &#8220;Cosmic
+Philosophy,&#8221; did much to familiarize the American reading public with the
+evolutionary philosophy of Spencer.</p>
+
+<p>Fiske claimed that his theory was entirely original, yet no one familiar
+with the thought of Browning could fail to see the similarity of their
+points of view. Fiske based his proof upon analogies drawn from the
+evolution of organic life in following out the law of the adjustment of
+inner to outer relations. For example, since the eye has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> through &aelig;ons
+of time gradually adjusted itself into harmony with light, why should not
+man&#8217;s search for God be the gradual adjustment of the soul into harmony
+with the infinite spirit? This adjustment, as Browning expresses it, is
+that of human love to divine love.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img04.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Herbert Spencer</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Other modern thinkers, notably Schleiermacher in Germany and Shaftsbury in
+England, have placed the basis of religious truth in feeling. The idea is
+thus not a new one. Yet in Browning&#8217;s treatment of it the conception has
+taken on new life, partly because of the intensity of conviction with
+which it is expounded in these later poems, and partly because of its
+having been so closely knit into the scientific thought of the century.</p>
+
+<p>Optimistically the thought is finally rounded out in &#8220;A Bean Stripe also
+Apple Eating,&#8221; in which Ferishtah argues that life in spite of the evil in
+it seems to him on the whole good. He cannot believe that evil is not
+meant to serve a good purpose since he is so sure that God is infinite in
+love.</p>
+
+<p>From all this it will be seen that Browning accepts with Spencerians the
+negative proof of God growing out of the failure of intellect to grasp the
+realities underlying all phenomena, but adds to it the positive proof
+based<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> upon emotion. The true basis of belief is the intuition of God
+that comes from the direct revelation of feeling in the human heart, which
+has been at once the motive force of the search for God and the basis of a
+conception of the nature of God.</p>
+
+<p>It was a stroke of genius on the part of the poet to present such problems
+in Persian guise, for Persia stands in Zoroastrianism for the dualism
+which Ferishtah with his progressive spirit decries in his recognition of
+the part evil plays in the development of good, and through Mahometanism
+for the Fatalism Ferishtah learned to cast from him. The Persian
+atmosphere is preserved throughout not only by the introduction constantly
+of Persian allusions traceable to the great Persian epic, &#8220;The Shah
+Nameh,&#8221; but by the telling of fables in the Persian manner to point the
+morals intended.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of the first Fancy, derived from a fable of Bidpai&#8217;s,
+we have the poet&#8217;s own word that all the others are inventions of his own.
+These clever stories make the poems lively reading in spite of their
+ethical content. Ferishtah is drawn with strong strokes. Wise and clever
+he stands before us, reminding us at times of Socrates&mdash;never at a loss
+for an answer no matter what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> bothersome questions his pupils may
+propound.</p>
+
+<p>If we see the thoughtful and brilliant Browning in the &#8220;Fancies&#8221; proper,
+we perhaps see even more clearly the emotional and passionate Browning in
+the lyrics which add variety and an unwonted charm to the whole. This
+feature is also borrowed from Persian form, an interesting example of
+which has been given to English readers in Edwin Arnold&#8217;s &#8220;Gulistan&#8221; or
+&#8220;Rose Garden&#8221; of the poet Sa&#8217;di. Indeed Browning evidently derived the
+hint for his humorous prologue in which he likens the poems to follow to
+an Italian dish made of ortolans on toast with a bitter sage leaf,
+symbolizing sense, sight, and song from Sa&#8217;di&#8217;s preface to the &#8220;Rose
+Garden,&#8221; wherein he says, &#8220;Yet will men of light and learning, from whom
+the true countenance of a discourse is not concealed, be well aware that
+herein the pearls of good counsel which heal are threaded on strings of
+right sense; that the bitter physic of admonition is constantly mingled
+with the honey of good humor, so that the spirits of listeners grow not
+sad, and that they remain not exempt from blessings of acceptance.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A further interest attaches to these lyrics because they form a series of
+emotional<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> phases in the soul-life of two lovers whom we are probably
+justified in regarding as Mr. and Mrs. Browning. One naturally thinks of
+them as companion pictures to Mrs. Browning&#8217;s &#8220;Sonnets from the
+Portuguese.&#8221; In these the sunrise of a great love is portrayed with
+intense and exalted passion, while the lyrics in &#8220;Ferishtah&#8217;s Fancies&#8221;
+reflect the subsequent development of such a love, through the awakening
+of whole new realms of feeling, wherein love for humanity is enlarged
+criticism from the one beloved welcome; all the little trials of life
+dissolved in the new light; and divine love realized with a force never
+before possible.</p>
+
+<p>Do we not see a living portrait of the two poets in the lyric &#8220;So the head
+aches and the limbs are faint?&#8221; Many a hint may be found in the Browning
+letters to prove that Mrs. Browning with just such a frail body possessed
+a fire of spirit that carried her constantly toward attainment, while he,
+with all the vigor of splendid health, could with truth have frequently
+said, &#8220;In the soul of me sits sluggishness.&#8221; These exquisite lyrics,
+which, whether they conform to Elizabethan models or not, are as fine as
+anything ever done in this form, are crowned by the epilogue in which we
+hear the stricken husband crying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> out to her whom twenty years earlier he
+had called his &#8220;lyric love,&#8221; in a voice doubting, yet triumphing in the
+thought that his lifelong optimism is the light radiating from the halo
+which her human love had irised round his head.</p>
+
+<p>No more emphatic way than the interspersion of these emotional lyrics
+could have been chosen to bring home the poet&#8217;s conviction of the value of
+emotion in finding a positive basis for religious belief.</p>
+
+<p>In the &#8220;Parleyings&#8221; the discussions turn principally upon artistic
+problems and their relation to modern thought. Four out of the seven were
+inspired by artist, poet or musician. The forgotten worthies whom Browning
+rescued from oblivion make their appeal to him upon various grounds that
+connect them with the present.</p>
+
+<p>Bernard de Mandeville evidently caught Browning&#8217;s fancy, because in his
+satirical poem, &#8220;The Grumbling Hive,&#8221; he forestalled, by a defence of the
+Duke of Marlborough&#8217;s war policy, the doctrine of the relativity of good
+and evil. This subject, though so fully treated in the &#8220;Fancies,&#8221; still
+continued to fascinate Browning, who seemed to feel the need of thinking
+his way through all its implications. Fresh interest is added in this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+case because the objector in the argument was the poet&#8217;s contemporary
+Carlyle, whose well-known pessimism in regard to the existence of evil is
+graphically presented.</p>
+
+<p>Browning clenches his side of the argument with an original and daring
+variation upon the Prometheus myth led up to by one of the most
+magnificent passages in the whole range of his poetry, and probably the
+finest example anywhere in literature of a description of nature as
+interpreted by the laws of cosmic evolution. A comparison of this passage
+with the one in &#8220;Paracelsus&#8221; brings out very clearly the exact measure of
+the advance in the poet&#8217;s thought during the fifty years between which
+they were written&mdash;1835 and 1887. While in the &#8220;Paracelsus&#8221; passage it is
+the thought of the joy in the creator&#8217;s soul for his creations, and the
+participation of mankind in this joy of progression while pleasure climbs
+its heights forever and forever, which occupies the poet&#8217;s mind, in the
+later passage, there is no attempt at a definite conception of the divine
+nature. Force represented in the sunlight is described as developing life
+upon the earth. The thrill of this life-giving power is felt by all
+things, and is unquestioningly accepted and delighted in.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+<span style="margin-left: 16em;">&#8220;Everywhere</span><br />
+Did earth acknowledge Sun&#8217;s embrace sublime<br />
+Thrilling her to the heart of things: since there<br />
+No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew,<br />
+No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew<br />
+Glad through the inrush&mdash;glad nor more nor less<br />
+Than, &#8217;neath his gaze, forest and wilderness,<br />
+Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread,<br />
+The universal world of creatures bred<br />
+By Sun&#8217;s munificence, alike gave praise.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Man alone questions. His mind reaches out for knowledge of the cause; he
+would know its nature. Man&#8217;s mind will not give any definite answer to
+this question. But Prometheus offered an artifice whereby man&#8217;s mind is
+satisfied. He drew sun&#8217;s rays into a focus plain and true. The very sun in
+little: made fire burn and henceforth do man service. Denuded of its
+scientific and mystical symbolism, Browning thus makes the Prometheus myth
+teach his favorite doctrine, namely, that the image of love formed in the
+human heart by means of the burning glass supplied by sense and feeling is
+a symbol of infinite love.</p>
+
+<p>Daniel Bartoli, a Jesuit of the seventeenth century who is dyed and doubly
+dyed in superstition, is set up by Browning in the next poem simply to be
+knocked down again upon the ground that all the legendary saints<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> he
+worshipped could not compare with a real woman the poet knows. The
+romantic story of the lady is told in Browning&#8217;s most fascinating
+narrative style, so rapid and direct that it has all the force of a
+dramatic sketch. The heroine&#8217;s claim upon the poet&#8217;s admiration consists
+in her recognition of the sacredness of love, which she will not dishonor
+for worldly considerations, and finding her betrothed incapable of
+attaining her height of nobleness, she leaves him free.</p>
+
+<p>This story bears upon the poet&#8217;s philosophy as it reflects his attitude
+toward human love, which he considers so clearly a revelation that any
+treatment of it not absolutely noble and true to the highest ideals is a
+sin against heaven itself.</p>
+
+<p>George Bubb Dodington is the black sheep of these later poems. He gives
+the poet an opportunity to let loose all his subtlety and sarcasm, while
+the reader may exercise his wits in discovering that the poet <i>assumes</i> to
+agree with Dodington in his doubtful doctrine of serving the state with an
+eye always upon his own private welfare, and pretends to criticise him
+only for his method of attaining his ends. His method is to disclaim that
+he works for any other good than that of the State&mdash;a proposition so
+preposterous in his case<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> that nobody would believe it. The poet then
+presents what purports to be the correct method of successful
+statesmanship&mdash;namely, to pose as a superior being endowed with the divine
+right to rule, treating everybody as his puppet, and entirely scornful of
+any criticisms against himself. If he will adopt this attitude he may
+change his tactics every year and the people, instead of suspecting his
+sincerity, will think that he has wise reasons beyond their insight for
+his changes. The poem is a powerful, intensely cynical argument against
+the imperialistic temper and in favor of liberal government. This means
+for the individual not only the right but the power to judge for himself,
+instead of being obliged to depend, because of his own inefficiency, upon
+the leadership of the over-man, whose intentions are unfortunately too
+seldom to be trusted.</p>
+
+<p>The poet called from the shades by Browning, Christopher Smart, is
+celebrated in the world of criticism for having only once in his life
+written a great poem. The eulogies upon the beauties of &#8220;The Song of
+David&#8221; might not be echoed by all lay readers of poetry; nor is it of any
+moment whether Browning actually agreed with the conclusions of the
+critics, since the episode is used merely as a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> text for discussing the
+problem of beauty versus truth in art. Should the poet&#8217;s province be
+simply to record his vision of the beauty and the strength of nature and
+the universe&mdash;visions which come to him in moments of inspiration such as
+that which came once to Christopher Smart? Browning answers the question
+characteristically with his feet upon the earth. The visions of poets
+should not be considered as ends in themselves, but as material to be used
+for greater ends.</p>
+
+<p>The poet should find his inspiration in the human heart, and climb to
+heaven by its means, not investigate the heavens first. Diligently must he
+study mankind, and teach as man may through his knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>In &#8220;Francis Furini&#8221; the subject is the nude in art. The keynote is struck
+by the poet&#8217;s declaring he will never believe the tale told by Baldinicci
+that Furini ordered all his pictures in which there were nude figures
+burned. He expresses his indignation at the tale vigorously at some
+length, showing plainly his own sympathies.</p>
+
+<p>The passage in the poem bearing more especially upon the present
+discussion is the lecture by Furini imagined by the poet to have been
+delivered before a London audience. It is a long and recondite speech in
+which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> the scientific and the intuitional methods of arriving at truth
+are compared. While the scientific method is acknowledged to be of value,
+the intuitional method is claimed as by far the more important.</p>
+
+<p>A philippic against Greek art and its imitation is delivered by the poet
+in the &#8220;Parleying with Gerard de Lairesse,&#8221; whom he makes the scapegoat of
+his strictures, on the score of a book Lairesse wrote in which was
+described a walk through a Dutch landscape when every feature was
+transmogrified by classic imaginings.</p>
+
+<p>To this good soul, an old sepulcher struck by lightning became the tomb of
+Phaeton, and an old cartwheel half buried in the sand near by, the Chariot
+of the Sun.</p>
+
+<p>In a spirit of bravado Browning proceeds to show what he himself could
+make of a walk provided he condescended to illuminate it by classic
+metaphor and symbol, and a remarkable passage is the result. It occupies
+from the eighth to the twelfth stanza. It is meant to be in derision of a
+grandiloquent, classically embroidered style but so splendid is the
+language, so haunting the pictures, the symbolism so profound that it is
+as if a God were showing some poor weakling mortal how not to do it&mdash;and
+through his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>omniscience must perforce create something wondrously
+beautiful. The double feeling produced in reading this passage only adds
+to its interest. After thus classicizing in a manner that might make
+Euripides, himself, turn green with envy, he nonchalantly remarks:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Enough, stop further fooling,&#8221; and to show how a modern poet greets a
+landscape he flings in the perfectly simple and irresistible little lyric:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Dance, yellows, and whites and reds.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The poet&#8217;s strictures upon classicism are entirely consonant with his
+philosophy, placing as he does the paramount importance on living
+realities, &#8220;Do and nowise dream,&#8221; he exclaims:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Earth&#8217;s young significance is all to learn;<br />
+The dead Greek love lies buried in its urn<br />
+Where who seeks fire finds ashes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The &#8220;Parleying&#8221; with Charles Avison is more a poem of moods than any of
+the others. The poet&#8217;s profound appreciation of music is reflected in his
+claiming it as the highest artistic expression possible to man. Sadness
+comes to him, however, at the thought of the ephemeralness of its forms, a
+fact that is borne in on him because of the inadequateness of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> Avison&#8217;s
+old march styled &#8220;grand.&#8221; He finally emerges triumphantly from this mood
+of sadness through the realization that music is the most perfect symbol
+of the evolution of spirit, of which the central truth&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;The inmost care where truth abides in fulness&#8221;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>as Paracelsus expresses it, remains always permanent, while the form is
+ever changing, but though ever changing it is of absolute value to the
+time when the spirit found expression in it. Furthermore, in any form once
+possessing beauty, by throwing one&#8217;s self into its historical atmosphere
+the beauty may be regained.</p>
+
+<p>The poem has, of course, a still larger significance in relation to all
+forms of truth and beauty of which every age has had its living, immortal
+examples, the &#8220;broken arcs&#8221; which finally will make the perfect round,
+each arc perfect in itself, and thus the poet&#8217;s final p&aelig;an is joyous,
+&#8220;Never dream that what once lived shall ever die.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The prologue of this series of poems prefigures the thought in a striking
+dialogue between Apollo and the Fates wherein the Fates symbolize the
+natural forces of life, behind which is Zeus or divine power; Apollo&#8217;s
+light symbolizes the glamour which hope and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> aspiration throw over the
+events of human existence, without actually giving any assurance of its
+worth, and the wine of Bacchus symbolizes feeling, by means of which a
+perception of the absolute is gained. Man&#8217;s reason, guided by the divine,
+accepts this revelation through feeling not as actual knowledge of the
+absolute which transcends all intellectual attempts to grasp it, but as a
+promise sufficiently assuring to take him through the ills and
+uncertainties of life with faith in the ultimate triumph of beauty and
+good.</p>
+
+<p>The epilogue, a dialogue between John Fust and his friends, brings home
+the thought once more in another form, emphasizing the fact that there can
+be no new realm of actual, palpable knowledge opened up to man beyond that
+which his intellect is able to perceive. Once having gained this knowledge
+of the failure of intellectual knowledge to solve what Whitman calls the
+&#8220;strangling problems&#8221; of life, man&#8217;s part is to follow onward through
+ignorance.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 11em;">&#8220;Dare and deserve!</span><br />
+As still to its asymptote speedeth the curve,<br />
+So approximates Man&mdash;Thee, who reachable not,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hast formed him to yearningly</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Follow thy whole</span><br />
+Sole and single omniscience!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>It will be seen from this review of the salient points enlarged upon by
+Browning in these last groups of poems that he has deliberately set
+himself to harmonize the intellectual and the intuitional aspects of human
+consciousness. He has sought to join the hands of mind and spirit. The
+artistic exuberance of Paracelsus is supplemented by spiritual fervor. To
+the young Browning, the beauty of immortal, joyous life pursuing its
+heights forever was as a radiant vision, to the Browning who had grappled
+with the strangling problems of the century this beauty was not so
+distinctly seen, but its reality was felt with all the depth of an
+intensely spiritual nature&mdash;a nature moreover so absolutely fearless, that
+it could unflinchingly confront every giant of doubt, or of
+disillusionment which science in its pristine egotism had conjured up,
+saying &#8220;Keep to thine own province, where thou art indeed powerful; to the
+threshold of the eternal we may come through thy ministrations, but the
+consciousness of divine things cometh through the still small voice of the
+heart.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Thus, while he accepted every law relating to phenomena which science has
+been able to formulate, he realized the futility of resting in a primal,
+wholly dehumanized energy, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> is, something not greater but less than
+its own outcome, humanity. He was incapable of any such absurdity as
+Clifford&#8217;s dictum that &#8220;Reason, intelligence and volition are properties
+of a complex which is made up of elements, themselves not rational, not
+intelligent, not conscious.&#8221; Since Clifford&#8217;s time, the marked differences
+between the processes of a psychic being like man, and the processes of
+nature have been so fully recognized and so carefully defined by
+psychologists that Browning&#8217;s insistence upon making man the center whence
+truth radiates has had full confirmation.</p>
+
+<p>Theodore Merz has summed up these psychological conclusions in regard to
+the characteristics peculiar to man as distinguished from all the rest of
+the universe in the following words:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;There are two properties with which we are familiar through common
+sense and ordinary reflection as belonging especially to the phenomena
+of our inner self-conscious life, and these properties seem to lie
+quite beyond the sphere and the possibilities of the ordinary methods
+of exact research.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As we ascend in the scale of human beings we become aware that they
+exhibit a special kind of unity which cannot be defined, a unity
+which, even when apparently lost in periods of unconsciousness, is
+able to reestablish itself by the wonderful and indefinable property
+called &#8216;memory&#8217;&mdash;a center which can only be very imperfectly
+localized&mdash;a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> together which is more than a mechanical sum; in fact
+we rise to the conception of individuality, that which cannot be
+divided and put together again out of its parts.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The second property is still more remarkable. The world of the inner
+processes which accompany the higher forms of nervous development in
+human beings is capable of unlimited growth and it is capable of this
+by a process of becoming external: it becomes external, and, as it
+were, perpetuates itself in language, literature, science and art,
+legislation, society, and the like. We have no analogue of this in
+physical nature, where matter and energy are constant quantities and
+where the growth and multiplication of living matter is merely a
+conversion of existing matter and energy into special altered forms
+without increase or decrease in quantity. But the quantity of the
+inner thing is continually on the increase; in fact, this increase is
+the only thing of interest in the whole world.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus the modern psychologist and the poet who in the early days of the
+century said the soul was the only thing worth study join hands.</p>
+
+<p>The passage already referred to in &#8220;Francis Furini&#8221; presents most
+explicitly the objective or intellectual method and the subjective or
+intuitional method of the search for truth.</p>
+
+<p>Furini is made to question&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 15em;">&#8220;Evolutionists!</span><br />
+At truth I glimpse from depths, you glance from heights,<br />
+Our stations for discovery opposites,<br />
+How should ensue agreement! I explain.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>He describes, then, how the search of the evolutionist for the absolute is
+outside of man. &#8220;&#8217;Tis the tip-top of things to which you strain.&#8221; Arriving
+at the spasm which sets things going, they are stopped, and since having
+arrived at unconscious energy, they can go no further, they now drop down
+to a point where atoms somehow begin to think, feel, and know themselves
+to be, and the world&#8217;s begun such as we recognize it. This is a true
+presentation of the attitude of physicists and chemists to-day, the latter
+especially holding that experiment proves that in the atoms themselves is
+an embryonic form of consciousness and will. From these is finally evolved
+at last self-conscious man. But after all this investigating on the part
+of the evolutionist what has been gained? Of power&mdash;that is, power to
+create nature or life, or even to understand it&mdash;man possesses no
+particle, and of knowledge, only just so much as to show that it ends in
+ignorance on every side. This is the result of the objective search for
+truth. But begin with man himself, and there is a fact upon which he can
+take a sure stand, his self-consciousness&mdash;a &#8220;togetherness,&#8221; as Merz says,
+which cannot be explained mathematically by the adding up of atoms; and
+furthermore an inborn <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>certainty that whatever is felt to be within had
+its rise or cause without: &#8220;thus blend the conscious I, and all things
+perceived in one Effect.&#8221; Through this subjective perception of an
+all-powerful cause a reflex light is thrown back upon all that the
+investigations of the intellect have accomplished. The cause is no longer
+simply blind energy, but must itself be possessed of gifts as great and
+still greater than those with which the soul of man is endowed. The forces
+at work in nature thus become instinct with wonder and beauty, the good
+and evil of life reveal themselves as a means used by absolute Power and
+Love for the perfecting of the soul which made to know on and ever must
+know</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;All to be known at any halting stage<br />
+Of [the] soul&#8217;s progress, such as earth, where wage<br />
+War, just for soul&#8217;s instruction, pain with joy,<br />
+Folly with wisdom, all that works annoy<br />
+With all that quiets and contents.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>To sum up&mdash;our investigations into Browning&#8217;s thought show him to be a
+type primarily of the mystic. Mysticism in its most pronounced forms
+regards the emotions of the human mind as supreme. The mystic, instead of
+allowing the intellectual faculty to lead the way, degrades it to an
+inferior<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> position and makes it entirely subservient to the feelings. In
+some moods Browning seems almost to belong to this pronounced type; for
+example, when he says in &#8220;A Pillar at Sebzevar,&#8221; &#8220;Say not that we know,
+rather that we love, therefore we know enough.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img05.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">David Strauss</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>It must be remembered, however, that he is not in either class of the
+supernatural mystic, one of which supposes truth to be gained by a fixed
+supernatural channel, the other that it is gained by extraordinary
+supernatural means. On the contrary, truth comes to Browning in pursuance
+of a regular law or fact of the inward sensibility, which may be defined
+in his case as a mode of intuition. His intuition of God, as we have seen,
+is based upon the feeling of love both in its human and its abstract
+aspects.</p>
+
+<p>But this is not all. Upon the intellectual side Browning accepted the
+conclusions of scientific investigation as far as phenomena were
+concerned, and while he denied its worth in giving direct knowledge of the
+Absolute, he recognized it as useful because of its very failure in
+strengthening the sense of the existence of a power transcending human
+conception. &#8220;What is our failure here but a triumph&#8217;s evidence of the
+fulness of the days?&#8221; And, furthermore, with mystic love<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> already in our
+hearts, all knowledge that the scientist may bring us of the phenomena of
+nature and life only adds immeasurably to our wonder and awe of the power
+which has brought these things to pass, thus &#8220;with much more knowledge&#8221;
+comes &#8220;always much more love.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Once more, the poet&#8217;s mysticism is tempered by a tinge of idealism. There
+are several passages in his poems, notably one already quoted from Furini,
+which show him to have had a perception of God directly through his own
+consciousness by means of what the idealist calls the higher reason. His
+perception, for instance, that whatever takes place within the
+consciousness had its rise without and that this external origin emanates
+from God is the idealist&#8217;s way of arriving at the absolute.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we see that into Browning&#8217;s religious conceptions enter the
+intuitions of the artistic consciousness as illustrated in Paracelsus
+where God is the divine artist joying in his creations, the intuitions of
+the intellect which finds in the failure of knowledge to probe the secrets
+of the universe the assurance of a transcendent power beyond human ken,
+the intuition of the higher reason which affirms God is, and the
+intuitions of the heart which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> promise that God is love, through whom is
+to come fulfilment of all human aspirations toward Beauty, Truth, and Love
+in immortality.</p>
+
+<p>If these are all points which have been emphasized, now by one, now by
+another, of the vast array of thinkers who have crowded the past century,
+there is no one who to my knowledge has so completely harmonized the
+various thought tendencies of the age, and certainly none who has clothed
+them in such a wealth of imaginative and emotional illustration.</p>
+
+<p>In these last poems Browning appears to borrow an apt term from Whitman,
+as the &#8220;Answerer&#8221; of his age. In them he has unquestioningly accepted the
+knowledge which science has brought, and, recognizing its relative
+character, has yet interpreted it in such a way as to make it subserve the
+highest ideals in ethics, religion, and art. Far from reflecting any
+degeneration in Browning&#8217;s philosophy of life, these poems place on a
+firmer basis than ever thoughts prominent in his poetry from the first,
+while adding to these the profounder insight into life which life&#8217;s
+experiences had brought him.</p>
+
+<p>The subject matter and form are no less remarkable than their thought. The
+variety<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> in both is almost bewildering. Religion and fable, romance and
+philosophy, art and science all commingled in rich profusion; everything
+in language&mdash;talk almost colloquial, dainty lyrics full of exquisite
+emotion, and grand passages which present in sweeping images now the
+processes of cosmic evolution, now those of spiritual evolution, until it
+seems as if we had indeed been conducted to some vast mountain height,
+whence we can look forth upon the century&#8217;s turbulent seas of thought,
+into which flows many a current from the past, while suspended above
+between the sea and sky, like the crucifix in Simons&#8217;s wonderful symbolic
+picture of the Middle Ages, is the mystical form of divine love and joy
+which Browning has made symbolic of the nineteenth century.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+<p class="title">POLITICAL TENDENCIES</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">In the</span> political affairs of his own age and country Browning as a poet
+shows little interest. This may at first seem strange, for that he was
+deeply sympathetic with past historical movements indicating a growth
+toward democratic ideals in government is abundantly proved by his choice
+and treatment of historical epochs in which the democratic tendencies were
+peculiarly evident. Why then did he not give us dramatic pictures of the
+Victorian era, in which as perhaps in no other era of English history the
+yeast of political freedom has been steadily and quietly working?</p>
+
+<p>There were probably several reasons for his failure to make himself felt
+as an influence in the political world of his time. In the first place, he
+was pre&euml;minently a dramatic poet, and as such his interest was in the
+presentation and analysis of individual character as it might work itself
+out in a given historical environment. To deal with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>contemporaries in
+this analytic manner would be a difficult and delicate matter, and, as we
+see, in those instances where he did venture upon an analysis of English
+contemporaries, as in the case of Wiseman (Bishop Blougram), Carlyle in
+Bernard de Mandeville and in &#8220;George Bubb Dodington,&#8221; the sketch of Lord
+Beaconsfield, he takes care to suppress every external circumstance which
+would lead to their identification, and to dwell only upon their
+intellectual or psychic aspects.</p>
+
+<p>A second reason is that the present is usually too near at hand to be used
+altogether effectively as dramatic material. Contemporary conditions of
+history seem to have an air of stateliness owing to the fact that every
+one is familiar with them, not only through talk and experience but
+through newspapers and magazines, while their larger, universal meanings
+cannot be seen at too close a range. If, however, past historical episodes
+and their tendencies can be so presented as to illustrate the tendencies
+of the present, then the needful artistic perspective is gained. In this
+manner, with a few minor exceptions, Browning has revealed the direction
+in which his political sympathies lay.</p>
+
+<p>When Browning was born, the first Napoleonic episode was nearing its
+close. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>Absolutism and militarism had in its lust for power and bloodshed
+slaughtered itself for the time being, and once more there was opportunity
+for the people of England to strive for their own enfranchisement.</p>
+
+<p>As a progressive ministry in England did not come into power until 1830,
+the struggles of the people were rewarded with little success during many
+years after the Battle of Waterloo. During the childhood and boyhood of
+Browning the events which from time to time marked the determination of
+the downtrodden Englishman to secure a larger measure of justice for
+himself were exciting enough to have made a strong impression upon the
+precocious mind of the incipient poet even in the seclusion of his
+father&#8217;s library at Camberwell.</p>
+
+<p>The artificial prosperity which had buoyed up the workman during the war
+with France suddenly collapsed with the advent of peace after the Battle
+of Waterloo. Everything seemed to combine to make the affairs of the
+workingman desperate. Public business had been blunderingly administered,
+and while a fatuous Cabinet was congratulating the nation upon the
+flourishing state of the country, trade was actually almost at a
+standstill, and failures in business were the order of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> day. To make
+matters worse, a wet summer and early frosts interfered with farming, and
+the result was that laborers and workmen could not find employment. A not
+unusual percentage of paupers in any given district was four fifths of the
+whole population. Thinking the farmers were to blame for the high price of
+bread, these starving people wreaked their vengeance on them by burning
+farm buildings, and machinery, and even stacks of corn and hay.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img06.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Cardinal Wiseman</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Instead of giving sympathy to these men in their desperate condition, a
+conservative government saw in them only rioters, and took the most
+stringent measures against them. They were tried by a special commission,
+and thirty-four of them were condemned to death, though it is recorded
+that only five of them were executed. The miners of Cornwall and Wales,
+the lace makers of Nottingham, and the iron workers of the Black Country,
+next broke out and the smashing of machinery continued. Finally there was
+a meeting of the artisans of London, Westminster, and Southwick in Spa
+Fields, Clerkenwall, which had been called by Harry Hunt, a man of
+property and education, who was known as a supporter of extreme measures,
+and the leader of the Radicals of that day. They met for the legitimate
+purpose,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> one would think, of considering the propriety of petitioning the
+Prince Regent and Parliament to adopt means of relieving the existing
+distress. One of the speakers, however, a poor doctor by the name of
+Watson, was of a more belligerent disposition. He made an inflammatory
+speech which ended by his seizing a tri-colored flag and marching toward
+the city followed by the turbulent rabble. On their way they seized the
+contents of a gunsmith&#8217;s shop on Snow Hill, murdered a man, and finally
+were met opposite the Mansion House by the Lord Mayor, who, assisted by a
+strong body of police, arrested some of the leaders and dispersed the
+rest. The arrested persons were brought to trial and indicted for high
+treason by the Attorney General, but the jury, evidently thinking the
+indictment had taken too exaggerated a form, acquitted Watson, and the
+others were dismissed.</p>
+
+<p>The conservative Parliament was, however, so alarmed by these proceedings
+that, instead of seeking some way of removing the cause of the
+difficulties, it thought only of making restrictions for the protection of
+the person of the Regent, of the more effective prevention of seditious
+meetings and of surer punishment. And what were some of these measures?
+Debating societies, lecture halls and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> reading rooms were shut up. Even
+lectures on medicine, surgery and chemistry were prohibited. Though there
+was a possibility of getting a license to lecture from the magistrate, the
+law was interpreted in the narrowest spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Parliamentary reform began to be spoken of in 1819, when a resolution
+pledging the House of Commons to the consideration of the state of
+representation was rejected by a vote of one hundred and fifty-three to
+fifty-eight. This decision stirred up the reform spirit, and large
+meetings in favor of it were held. The people attending these meetings
+received military drilling and marched to their meetings in orderly
+processions, a fact naturally very disturbing to the government. When a
+great meeting was arranged at Manchester on the 16th of August, troops
+were accordingly sent to Manchester. The cavalry was ordered to charge the
+crowd, and although they used the flat side of their swords, the charge
+resulted in the killing of six persons and the wounding of some hundreds.
+The clash did not end here, for to offset the ministerial approval of the
+action of the magistrates and their decision that the meeting was illegal,
+the Common Council of London passed a resolution by a large majority<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+declaring that the meeting was legal. A number of Whig noblemen also were
+on the side of the London Council and made similar motions. But the
+ministers, unmoved by these signs of the times, introduced bills in
+Parliament for the repression of disorder and the further restraining of
+public liberty. The bills, it is true, were strenuously opposed in both
+houses, but the eloquence expended against them was all to no purpose, the
+bills were passed, and reform for the time being was nipped in the bud.</p>
+
+<p>Although after this laws were gradually introduced by the ministers which
+tended very much to the betterment of conditions, the fire of reform did
+not burst out again with full fury until the time of the Revolution of
+July, in France, which it will be remembered was directed against the
+despotic King Charles X, and ended in his being deposed, when his crown
+was given to his distant cousin Louis Philippe. The success of the French
+in their stand against despotism caused a general revolutionary stir in
+several European countries, while in England the spirit of revolution
+showed itself in incendiary fires from one end of the country to the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>With Parliament itself full of believers in reform, the chief of the
+Cabinet, the Duke of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> Wellington, announced that the House of Commons did
+not need reform and that he would resist all proposals for a change. So
+great was the popular excitement at this announcement that the Duke could
+not venture to go forth to dine at the Guildhall for fear that he might be
+attacked.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the chief episodes in the forward advance of the people up to
+the time of the presentation of the Reform Bill in Parliament. This
+important measure has been described as the greatest organic change in the
+British Constitution that had taken place since the revolution of 1688.
+When this bill was finally passed it meant a transference of governmental
+control from the upper classes to the middle classes, and was the
+inauguration of a policy which has constantly added to the prosperity and
+well-being of the English people. The agitation upon this bill, introduced
+in the House by Lord John Russell, under the Premiership of Earl Grey, and
+a ministry favorable to reform, was filling the attention of all
+Englishmen to the exclusion of every other subject just at the time when
+Browning was emerging into manhood, 1831 and 1832, and though he has not
+commemorated in his poetry this great step in the political progress of
+his own century, his first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> play, written in 1837, takes up a period of
+English history in which a momentous struggle for liberty on the part of
+the people was in progress.</p>
+
+<p>Important as the Reform Bill was, it furnished no such picturesque
+episodes for a dramatist as did the struggle of Pym and Strafford under
+the despotic rule of King Charles I.</p>
+
+<p>In choosing this period for his play the poet found not only material
+which furnished to his hand a series of wonderfully dramatic situations,
+but in the three men about whom the action moves is presented an
+individuality and a contrast in character full of those possibilities for
+analysis so attractive to Browning&#8217;s mind.</p>
+
+<p>Another point to be gained by taking this remote period of history was
+that his attitude could be supremely that of the philosopher of history.
+He could portray with fairness whatever worth of character he found to
+admire in the leaders upon either side, at the same time that he could
+show which possessed the winning principle&mdash;the principle of progress. In
+dealing with contemporary events a strong personal feeling is sure to gain
+the upper hand, and to be non-partisan and therefore truly dramatic is a
+difficult, if not an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> impossible, task. When we come to examine this play,
+we find that the character which unquestionably interested the poet most
+was Strafford&#8217;s; not because of his political principles but because of
+his devotion to his King. Human love and loyalty in whomever manifested
+was always of the supremest interest to Browning, and, working upon any
+hints furnished by history, the poet has developed the character of
+Strafford in the light of his personal friendship for the King&mdash;a feeling
+so powerful that no fickle change of mood on the part of the King could
+alter it. Upon this fact of his personal relations to the King Strafford&#8217;s
+actions in this great crisis have been interpreted and explained, though
+not defended, from the political point of view.</p>
+
+<p>Some wavering on the part of Pym is also explained upon the ground of his
+friendship for and his belief in Strafford, but mark the difference
+between the two men. Pym, once sure that Strafford is not on the side of
+progress, crushes out all personal feeling. He allows nothing to stand in
+the way of his political policy. With unflinching purpose he proceeds
+against his former friend, straight on to the impeachment for treason,
+straight on, like an inexorable fate, to the prevention of his rescue from
+execution. Browning&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> dramatic imagination is responsible for this last
+climax in which he brings the two men face to face. Here, in Pym&#8217;s
+strength of will to serve England at any cost, mingled with the hope of
+meeting Strafford purged of all his errors in a future life, and in
+Strafford&#8217;s response, &#8220;When we meet, Pym, I&#8217;d be set right&mdash;not now! Best
+die,&#8221; is foreshadowed the ultimate triumph of the parliamentary over the
+monarchical principles of government, and the poet&#8217;s own sympathy with the
+party of progress is made plain.</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting in the present connection to inquire whether there are
+any parallels between the agitation connected with the reform legislation
+of 1832 and the revolution at the time of Charles I which might send
+Browning&#8217;s mind back to that period. The special point about which the
+battle raged in 1832 was the representation in Parliament. This was so
+irregular that it was absolutely unfair. In many instances large districts
+or towns would have fewer representatives than smaller ones, or perhaps
+none at all. Representation was more a matter of favoritism than of
+justice. The votes in Parliament were, therefore, not at all a true
+measure of the attitude of the country. It seems strange that so eminently
+sensible a reform should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> meet with such determined opposition. As usual,
+those in power feared loss of privilege. The House of Lords was the
+obstruction. The bill was in fact a step logically following upon the
+determination of the people of the time of Charles I that they would not
+submit to be levied upon for ship-money upon the sole authority of the
+King. They demanded that Parliament, which had not been assembled for ten
+years, should meet and decide the question. This question was not merely
+one of the war-tax or ship-money, but of whether the King should have the
+power to levy taxes upon the people without consent of Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>As every one knows, when the King finally consented to the assembling of
+Parliament, in April, 1840, he informed it that there would be no
+discussion of its demands until it had granted the war subsidies for which
+it had been asked. The older Vane added to the consternation of the
+assembly by announcing that the King would accept nothing less than the
+twelve subsidies which he had demanded in his message. In the face of this
+ultimatum the committee broke up without coming to a conclusion,
+postponing further consideration until the next day, but before they had
+had time to consider the matter the next day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> the King had decided to
+dissolve the Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>The King was forced, however, to reassemble Parliament again in the
+autumn. In this Parliament the people&#8217;s party gained control, and many
+reforms were instituted. Led by such daring men as Pym, Hampden, Cromwell,
+and the younger Vane, resolutions were passed censuring the levying of
+ship-money, tonnage and poundage, monopolies, innovations in religion&mdash;in
+fact, all the grievances of the oppressed which had been ignored for a
+decade were brought to light and redressed by the House, quite regardless
+of the King&#8217;s attitude.</p>
+
+<p>The chief of the abuses which it was bent upon remedying was the imposing
+of taxes upon the authority of the King and the persecution of the
+Puritans. But there was another grievance which received the attention of
+the Long Parliament, and which forms a close link with the reforms of
+1832&mdash;namely, the attempt to improve the system of representation in
+Parliament, an attempt which was partially carried into effect by Cromwell
+later. Under Charles II, however, things fell back into their old way and
+gradually went on from bad to worse until the tide changed, and the people
+became finally<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> aroused after two hundred years to the need of a radical
+change. The blindness of the Duke of Wellington, declaring no reform was
+needed, is hardly less to be marveled at than that of King Charles
+declaring he would rule without Parliament. The King took the ground that
+the people had no right to representation in the government; the Minister,
+that only some of the people had a right.</p>
+
+<p>The horrors of revolution followed upon the blindness of the one, with its
+reactionary aftermath, while upon the other there was violence, it is
+true, and a revolution was feared, but through the wise measures of the
+liberal ministers no subversion of the government occurred. Violence
+reached such a pitch, however, that the castle of Nottingham in Derby was
+burned, the King&#8217;s brother was dragged from his horse, and Lord
+Londonderry roughly treated. The mob at Bristol was so infuriated that Sir
+C. Wetherell, the Recorder of the city, who had voted against the bill,
+had to be escorted to the Guildhall by a hundred mounted gentlemen. Two
+men having been arrested, the mob attacked and destroyed the interior of
+the Mansion House, set fire to the Bishop&#8217;s palace and to many other
+buildings. There was not only an enormous loss of property, but loss of
+life.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>A quieter demonstration at Birmingham carries us back, as it might have
+carried Browning, to the &#8220;great-hearted men&#8221; of the Long Parliament. A
+meeting was called which was attended by one hundred and fifty thousand
+persons, and resolutions were passed to the effect that if the Reform Bill
+were not passed they would refuse to pay taxes, as Hampden had refused to
+pay ship-money.</p>
+
+<p>The final act in this momentous drama was initiated with the introduction
+by Lord John Russell of the third Reform Bill in December, 1831. Again it
+was defeated in the House of Lords, whereupon some of the Cabinet wished
+to ask the King to create a sufficient number of new peers to force the
+bill through the House. Earl Grey was not at all in favor of this, but at
+last consented. This course was not welcome to the House of Lords, and the
+doubtful members in the House promised that if this suggestion were not
+carried into effect they would insure a sufficient majority in the House
+of Lords to carry the bill. This was done, but before the Lords went into
+committee a hostile motion postponing the disfranchisement clauses was
+carried. Then Earl Grey asked for the creation of new peers. As it would
+require the creating of about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> fifty new peers, the King refused, the
+ministry resigned and the Duke of Wellington came into power again. But
+his power, like that of Strafford, was broken. He had reached the point of
+recognizing that some reform was needed, but he could not persuade his
+colleagues of this. In the meantime the House of Commons passed a
+resolution of confidence in the Grey administration. Such determined
+opposition being shown not only in Parliament but by the people in various
+ways, Wellington felt his only course was resignation. William IV had,
+much to his chagrin, to recall Grey, but he escaped the necessity of
+creating a large number of peers, by asking the opposition in the House of
+Lords to withdraw their resistance to the bill. The Duke of Wellington and
+others thereupon absented themselves, and finding further obstruction was
+useless, the Lords at last passed the bill and it became law in June,
+1832.</p>
+
+<p>This national crisis through which Browning had lived could not fail to
+have made its impression on him. It is certainly an indication of the
+depth of his interest in the growth of liberalism that his first English
+subject, written only a few years subsequent to this momentous change in
+governmental methods, should have dealt with a period whose analysis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> and
+interpretation in dramatic form gave him every opportunity for the
+expression of his sympathy with liberal ideals. Broad-minded in his
+interpretation of Strafford&#8217;s career, in love with his qualities of
+loyalty, and his capabilities of genuine affection for the vacillating
+Charles, he made Strafford the hero of his play, but it is Pym whom, in
+his play, he has exalted as the nation&#8217;s hero, and into whose mouth he has
+put one of the greatest and most intensely pathetic speeches ever uttered
+by an Englishman. It is when he confronts Strafford at the last:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Have I done well? Speak, England! Whose sole sake<br />
+I still have labored for, with disregard<br />
+To my own heart,&mdash;for whom my youth was made<br />
+Barren, my manhood waste, to offer up<br />
+Her sacrifice&mdash;this friend&mdash;this Wentworth here&mdash;<br />
+Who walked in youth with me, loved me, it may be,<br />
+And whom, for his forsaking England&#8217;s cause,<br />
+I hunted by all means (trusting that she<br />
+Would sanctify all means) even to the block<br />
+Which waits for him. And saying this, I feel<br />
+No bitterer pang than first I felt, the hour<br />
+I swore that Wentworth might leave us, but I<br />
+Would never leave him: I do leave him now.<br />
+I render up my charge (be witness, God!)<br />
+To England who imposed it. I have done<br />
+Her bidding&mdash;poorly, wrongly,&mdash;it may be,<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>With ill effects&mdash;for I am weak, a man:<br />
+Still, I have done my best, my human best,<br />
+Not faltering for a moment. It is done.<br />
+And this said, if I say ... yes, I will say<br />
+I never loved but one man&mdash;David not<br />
+More Jonathan! Even thus I love him now:<br />
+And look for that chief portion in that world<br />
+Where great hearts led astray are turned again,<br />
+(Soon it may be, and, certes, will be soon:<br />
+My mission over, I shall not live long)&mdash;<br />
+Ay, here I know and talk&mdash;I dare and must,<br />
+Of England, and her great reward, as all<br />
+I look for there; but in my inmost heart,<br />
+Believe, I think of stealing quite away<br />
+To walk once more with Wentworth&mdash;my youth&#8217;s friend<br />
+Purged from all error, gloriously renewed,<br />
+And Eliot shall not blame us. Then indeed ...<br />
+This is no meeting, Wentworth! Tears increase<br />
+Too hot. A thin mist&mdash;is it blood?&mdash;enwraps<br />
+The face I loved once. Then, the meeting be.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At the same time that Browning was writing &#8220;Strafford,&#8221; he was also
+engaged upon &#8220;Sordello.&#8221; In that he has given expression to his democratic
+philosophy through his construction and interpretation of Sordello&#8217;s
+character as a champion of the people as well as a poet who ushered in the
+dawn of the Italian literary Renaissance. As he made Paracelsus develop
+from a dependence upon knowledge as his sole guide in his philosophy of
+life into a perception of the place emotion must hold in any satisfactory
+theory of life,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> and put into his mouth a modern conception of evolution
+illuminated by his own artistic emotion, so he makes Sordello develop from
+the individualistic type to the socialist type of man, who is bent upon
+raising the masses of the people to higher conditions. The ideal of
+liberal forms of government was even in Sordello&#8217;s time a growing one,
+sifting into Italy from Greek precedents, but Browning&#8217;s Sordello sees
+something beyond either political or ecclesiastical espousal of the
+people&#8217;s cause&mdash;namely, the espousal of the people&#8217;s cause by the people
+themselves, the arrival of the self-governing democracy, an ideal much
+nearer attainment now than when Browning was writing:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Two parties take the world up, and allow<br />
+No third, yet have one principle, subsist<br />
+By the same injustice; whoso shall enlist<br />
+With either, ranks with man&#8217;s inveterate foes.<br />
+So there is one less quarrel to compose<br />
+The Guelf, the Ghibelline may be to curse&mdash;<br />
+I have done nothing, but both sides do worse<br />
+Than nothing. Nay, to me, forgotten, reft<br />
+Of insight, lapped by trees and flowers, was left<br />
+The notion of a service&mdash;ha? What lured<br />
+Me here, what mighty aim was I assured<br />
+Must move Taurello? What if there remained<br />
+A cause, intact, distinct from these, ordained<br />
+For me its true discoverer?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>The mood here portrayed was one which might have been fostered in Browning
+in relation to his own time. He doubtless felt that neither the
+progressive movements in the state nor those in religion really touched
+upon the true principles of freedom for the individual. He might not have
+defined these principles to himself any more definitely than as a desire
+for the greatest happiness of the whole number. And even of such an ideal
+as that he had his doubts because of the necessity of his mind to find a
+logical use for evil in the world. This he could only do by supposing it a
+divine means for the development of the human soul in its sojourn in this
+life. Speaking in his own person in &#8220;Sordello,&#8221; he gives expression to
+this doubt in the following passage in the third book:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">&#8220;I ask youth and strength</span><br />
+And health for each of you, not more&mdash;at length<br />
+Grown wise, who asked at home that the whole race<br />
+Might add the spirit&#8217;s to the body&#8217;s grace,<br />
+And all be dizened out as chiefs and bards.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><strong><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></strong></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">&#8220;&mdash;&mdash;As good you sought</span><br />
+To spare me the Piazza&#8217;s slippery stone<br />
+Or keep me to the unchoked canals alone,<br />
+As hinder Life the evil with the good<br />
+Which make up Living rightly understood.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>Still, though vague as to what the good for the whole people might be,
+there was no vagueness in his mind as to the people&#8217;s right to possess the
+power to bring about their own happiness. Yet given the right principles,
+he would not have the attempt made to put them into practice all at once.</p>
+
+<p>His final attitude toward the problem of the best methods for bettering
+human conditions in the poem is, strictly speaking, that of the
+opportunist working a step toward his ideal rather than that of the
+revolutionist who would gain it by one leap. Sordello should realize that</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;God has conceded two lights to a man&mdash;<br />
+One, of men&#8217;s whole work, man&#8217;s first<br />
+Step to the plan&#8217;s completeness.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Man&#8217;s part is to take this first step, leaving the ultimate ideal to be
+worked out, as time goes, on by successive men. To reach at one bound the
+ideal would be to regard one&#8217;s self as a god. Some such theory of action
+as this is the one which guides the Fabian socialist working in England
+to-day. Nothing is to be done to subvert the present order of society, but
+every opportunity is to be made the most of which will tend to the
+betterment of the conditions of the masses, until by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> degrees the
+socialist r&eacute;gime will become possible. Sordello was too much of the
+idealist to seize the opportunity when it came to him of helping the
+people by means of the Ghibelline power suddenly conferred upon him, and
+so he failed.</p>
+
+<p>This opportunist doctrine is one especially congenial to the English
+temperament and certainly has its practical advantages, if it is not so
+inspiring as the headlong idealism of a Pym, which just as surely has its
+disadvantages in the danger that the ideal will be ahead of humanity&#8217;s
+power of seizing it and living it, and will therefore run the risk of
+being overturned by a reaction to the low plane of the past; especially
+does this danger become apparent when the way to the attainment of the
+ideal is paved with violence.</p>
+
+<p>While Browning was writing &#8220;Sordello,&#8221; the preparation of which included a
+short trip to Italy, the Chartist agitation was going on in England. It
+may well, at that time, have been considered to demand an ideal beyond
+possibility of attainment, which was proved by its final utter
+annihilation. The workingmen&#8217;s association led by Mr. Duncombe was
+responsible for a program in the form of a parliamentary petition which
+asked for six things. These were: universal suffrage,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> or the right of
+voting by every male of twenty-one years of age; vote by ballot; annual
+Parliaments; abolition of the property qualification for members of
+Parliament; members of Parliament to be paid for their services; equal
+electoral districts.</p>
+
+<p>There were two sorts of Chartists, moral-force Chartists and
+physical-force Chartists, the latter of whom did as much damage as
+possible in the agitation.</p>
+
+<p>The combined forces were led by Feargus O&#8217;Connor, an Irish barrister, who
+madly spent his force and energy for ten years in carrying forward the
+movement, and, at last, confronted by disagreement in the ranks of the
+Chartists and the Duke of Wellington and his troops, gave it up in
+despair. He was a martyr to the cause, for he took its failure so much to
+heart that he ended his days in a lunatic asylum.</p>
+
+<p>This final failure came many years after &#8220;Sordello&#8221; was finished, but the
+poet&#8217;s conclusions in &#8220;Sordello&#8221; seem almost prophetic in the light of the
+passage in the poem already quoted, in which the poet declares himself
+grown wiser than he was at home, where he had asked the utmost for all
+men, and now realized that this cannot be attained in one leap.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>Agitation about the relations between England and Ireland were also
+filling public attention at this time, but most important of all the
+contemporary movements was the League for the Repeal of the Corn Laws. The
+story of the growth and the peaceful methods by which it attained its
+growth is one of the most interesting in the annals of England&#8217;s political
+development. It meant the adoption of the great principle of free trade,
+to which England has since adhered. For eight years the agitation in
+regard to it was continued, during which great meetings were held,
+thousands of pounds were subscribed to the cause, and the names of Sir
+Richard Cobden and John Bright became famous as leaders in the righteous
+cause of untaxed food for the people. John Bright&#8217;s account of how he
+became interested in the movement and associated himself with Cobden in
+the work, told in a speech made at Rochdale, gives a vivid picture of the
+human side of the problem which by the conservatives of the day was
+treated as a merely political issue:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;In the year 1841 I was at Leamington and spent several months there.
+It was near the middle of September there fell upon me one of the
+heaviest blows that can visit any man. I found myself living there
+with none living of my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> house but a motherless child. Mr. Cobden
+called upon me the day after that event, so terrible to me and so
+prostrating. He said, after some conversation, &#8216;Don&#8217;t allow this
+grief, great as it is, to weigh you down too much. There are at this
+moment in thousands of homes in this country wives and children who
+are dying of hunger&mdash;of hunger made by the law. If you come along with
+me, we will never rest till we have got rid of the Corn Law.&#8217; We saw
+the colossal injustice which cast its shadow over every part of the
+nation, and we thought we saw the true remedy and the relief, and that
+if we united our efforts, as you know we did, with the efforts of
+hundreds and thousands of good men in various parts of the country, we
+should be able to bring that remedy home, and to afford that relief to
+the starving people of this country.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>The movement thus inaugurated was, as Molesworth declares, &#8220;without
+parallel in the history of the world for the energy with which it was
+conducted, the rapid advance it made, and the speedy and complete success
+that crowned its efforts; for the great change it wrought in public
+opinion and the consequent legislation of the country; overcoming
+prejudice and passion, dispelling ignorance and conquering powerful
+interests, with no other weapons than those of reason and that eloquence
+which great truths and strong conviction inspire.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A signal victory for the League was gained in 1843, when the London
+<i>Times</i>, which up to that time had regarded the League with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> suspicion
+and even alarm, suddenly turned round and ranged itself with the advancing
+tide of progress by declaring, &#8220;The League is a great fact. It would be
+foolish, nay, rash, to deny its importance. It is a great fact that there
+should have been created in the homestead of our manufacturers
+(Manchester) a confederacy devoted to the agitation of one political
+question, persevering at it year after year, shrinking from no trouble,
+dismayed at no danger, making light of every obstacle. It demonstrates the
+hardy strength of purpose, the indomitable will, by which Englishmen
+working together for a great object are armed and animated.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The final victory, however, did not come until three years later, when Sir
+Robert Peel, who became Prime Minister to defend the Corn Laws, announced
+that he had been completely convinced of their injustice, and that he was
+an &#8220;absolute convert to the free-trade principle, and that the
+introduction of the principle into all departments of our commercial
+legislation was, according to his intention, to be a mere question of time
+and convenience.&#8221; This was in January, 1845, and shortly after, June,
+1846, the bill for the total repeal of the Corn Laws passed the House.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>How much longer it might have been before the opposition was carried is a
+question if it had not been for the failure of the grain crops and the
+widespread potato disease which plunged Ireland into a state of famine,
+and threatened the whole country with more or less of disaster.</p>
+
+<p>Even when this state of affairs became apparent in the summer of 1845
+there was still much delay. The Cabinet met and discussed and discussed;
+still Parliament was not assembled; and then it was that the Mansion House
+Relief Committee of Dublin drew up resolutions stating that famine and
+pestilence were approaching throughout the land, and impeaching the
+conduct of the Ministry for not opening the ports or calling Parliament
+together.</p>
+
+<p>But still Peel, already won over, could not take his Cabinet with him; he
+was forced to resign. Lord John Russell was called to form a ministry, but
+failed, when Peel was recalled, and the day was carried.</p>
+
+<p>Browning&#8217;s brief but pertinent allusion to this struggle in &#8220;The
+Englishman in Italy&#8221; shows clearly how strongly his sympathies were with
+the League and how disgusted he was with the procrastination of Parliament
+in taking a perfectly obvious step for the betterment of the people.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+&#8220;Fortnu, in my England at home,<br />
+Men meet gravely to-day<br />
+And debate, if abolishing Corn laws<br />
+Be righteous and wise<br />
+If &#8217;twere proper, Scirocco should vanish<br />
+In black from the skies!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>An occasional allusion or poem like this makes us aware from time to time
+of Browning&#8217;s constant sympathy with any movement which meant good to the
+masses. Even if he had not written near the end of his life &#8220;Why I am a
+Liberal,&#8221; there could be no doubt in any one&#8217;s mind of his political
+ideals. In &#8220;The Lost Leader&#8221; is perhaps his strongest utterance upon the
+subject. The fact that it was called out by Wordsworth&#8217;s lapse into
+conservatism after the horrors of the French Revolution had brought him
+and his <i>sans culotte</i> brethren, Southey and Coleridge, to pause, a fact
+very possibly freshened in Browning&#8217;s mind by Wordsworth&#8217;s receiving a
+pension in 1842 and the poet-laureateship in 1843, does not affect the
+force of the poem as a personal utterance on the side of democracy.
+Browning, himself, considered the poem far too fierce as a portrayal of
+Wordsworth&#8217;s case.<small><a name="f2.1" id="f2.1" href="#f2">[2]</a></small> He evidently forgot Wordsworth, and thought only of
+a renegade<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> liberal as he went on with the poem. It was written the same
+year that there occurred the last attempt to postpone the passing of the
+Anti-Corn Law Bill, when the intensity of feeling on the part of all who
+believed in progress was at its height, and the bare thought of a deserter
+from Liberal ranks would be enough to exasperate any man who had the
+nation&#8217;s welfare at heart. That Browning&#8217;s feeling at the time reached the
+point not only of exasperation but of utmost scorn for any one who was not
+on the liberal side is shown most forcibly in the bitter lines:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,</span><br />
+One more devil&#8217;s triumph and sorrow for angels,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">One more wrong to man, one more insult to God!&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>Browning speaks of having thought of Wordsworth at an unlucky juncture.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever the exact episode which called forth the poem may have been, we
+are safe in saying that at a time when Disraeli was attacking Sir Robert
+Peel because of his honesty in avowing his conversion to free trade, and
+because of his bravery in coming out from his party, in breaking up his
+cabinet and regardless of all costs in determining to carry the bill or
+resign, and finally carrying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> it in the face of the greatest odds&mdash;at
+such a time, when a great conservative leader had shown himself capable of
+being won over to a great liberal principle; the spectacle of a deserter
+from the cause, and that deserter a member of one&#8217;s own brotherhood of
+poets, would be especially hard to bear.</p>
+
+<p>One feels a little like asking why did not Browning let his enthusiasm
+carry him for once into a contemporary expression of admiration for Sir
+Robert Peel? Perhaps the tortuous windings of parliamentary proceedings
+obscured to a near view the true greatness of Peel&#8217;s action.</p>
+
+<p>The year of this great change in England&#8217;s policy was the year of Robert
+Browning&#8217;s marriage and his departure for Italy, where he lived for
+fifteen years. During this time and for some years after his return to
+England there is no sign that he was taking any interest in the political
+affairs of his country. Human character under romantic conditions in a
+social environment, or the thought problems of the age, as we have already
+seen, occupied his attention, and for the subject matter of these he more
+often than not went far afield from his native country.</p>
+
+<p>In &#8220;Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau&#8221; is the poet&#8217;s first deliberate portrayal
+of a person<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> of contemporary prominence in the political world. The
+alliance of Napoleon III with England brought his policy of government
+into strong contrast with that of the liberal leaders in English politics,
+a contrast which had been emphasized through Lord Palmerston&#8217;s sympathy
+with the <i>coup d&#8217;&eacute;tat</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The news of the manner in which Louis Napoleon had carried out his policy
+of smashing the French constitution caused horror and consternation in
+England, and the Queen at once gave instructions that nothing should be
+done by her ambassador in Paris which could be in any way construed as an
+interference in the internal affairs of France. Already, however, Lord
+Palmerston had expressed to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs his
+entire approbation in the act of Napoleon and his conviction that he could
+not have acted otherwise than as he had done. When this was known, the
+Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, wrote Palmerston a letter, causing his
+resignation, which was accepted very willingly by the Queen. The letter
+was as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;While I concur in the foreign policy of which you have been the
+adviser, and much as I admire the energy and ability with which it has
+been carried into effect, I cannot but observe that misunderstandings
+perpetually renewed, violations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> of prudence and decorum too
+frequently repeated, have marred the effects which ought to have
+followed from a sound policy and able admirers. I am, therefore, most
+reluctantly compelled to come to the conclusion that the conduct of
+foreign affairs can no longer be left in your hands with advantage to
+the country.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>When England&#8217;s fears that Louis Napoleon would emulate his illustrious
+predecessor and invade her shores were allayed, her attitude was modified.
+She forgot the horrors of the <i>coup d&#8217;&eacute;tat</i> and formed an alliance with
+him, and her hospitable island became his refuge in his downfall.</p>
+
+<p>A prominent figure in European politics for many years, Louis Napoleon had
+just that combination of greatness and mediocrity which would appeal to
+Browning&#8217;s love of a human problem. Furthermore, Napoleon was brought very
+directly to the poet&#8217;s notice through his Italian campaign and Mrs.
+Browning&#8217;s interest in the political crisis in Italy, which found
+expression in her fine group of Italian patriotic poems.</p>
+
+<p>The question has been asked, &#8220;Will the unbiased judgment of posterity
+allow to Louis Napoleon some extenuating circumstances, or will it
+pronounce an unqualified condemnation upon the man who, for the sake of
+consolidating his own power and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> strengthening his corrupt government,
+spilled the blood of no less than a hundred thousand Frenchmen?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When all Europe was putting to itself some such question as this, and
+answering it with varying degrees of leniency, Browning conceived the idea
+of making Napoleon speak for himself, and at the same time he added what
+purports to be the sort of criticism of him indulged in by a Thiers or a
+Victor Hugo. The interest of the poem centers in Napoleon&#8217;s own
+vindication of himself as portrayed by Browning. What Browning wrote of
+the poem in a letter to a friend in 1872 explains fully his aim, as well
+as showing by indirection, at least, how much he was interested in
+political affairs at this time, though so little of this interest crops
+out in his poetry: &#8220;I think in the main he meant to do what I say, and but
+for weakness&mdash;grown more apparent in his last years than formerly&mdash;would
+have done what I say he did not. I thought badly of him at the beginning
+of his career, <i>et pour cause</i>; better afterward, on the strength of the
+promises he made and gave indications of intending to redeem. I think him
+very weak in the last miserable year. At his worst I prefer him to
+Thiers&#8217;s best.&#8221; At another time he wrote: &#8220;I am<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> glad you like what the
+editor of the <i>Edinburgh</i> calls my eulogium on the Second Empire, which it
+is not, any more than what another wiseacre affirms it to be, &#8216;a
+scandalous attack on the old constant friend of England.&#8217; It is just what
+I imagine the man might, if he pleased, say for himself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Browning depicts the man as perfectly conscious of his own limitations. He
+recognizes that he is not the genius, nor the creator of a new order of
+things, but that his power lies in his faculty of taking an old ideal and
+improving upon it. He contends that in following out his special gifts as
+a conservator he is doing just what God intended him to do, and as to his
+method of doing it that is his own affair. God gives him the commission
+and leaves it to his human faculties to carry it out, not inquiring what
+these are, but simply asking at the end if the commission has been
+accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>Once admit these two things&mdash;namely, that his nature, though not of the
+highest, is such as God gave him, and his lack of responsibility in regard
+to any moral ideal, so that he accomplishes the purpose of this
+nature&mdash;and a loophole is given for any inconsistencies he may choose to
+indulge in in bringing about that strengthening of an old ideal in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> which
+he believes. The old ideal is, of course, the monarchical principle of
+government, administered, however, in such a manner that it will be for
+the good of society in all its complex manifestations of to-day. His
+notion of society&#8217;s good consists in a balancing of all its forces,
+secured by the smoothing down of any extreme tendencies, each having its
+orbit marked but no more, so that none shall impede the other&#8217;s path.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;In this wide world&mdash;though each and all alike,<br />
+Save for [him] fain would spread itself through space<br />
+And leave its fellow not an inch of way.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Browning makes him indulge in a curiously sophisticated view of the
+relativity of good and evil in the course of his argument, to the effect
+that since there is a further good conceivable beyond the utmost earth can
+realize, therefore to change the agency&mdash;the evil whereby good is brought
+about, try to make good do good as evil does&mdash;would be just as foolish as
+if a chemist wanting white and knowing that black ingredients were needed
+to make the dye insisted these should be white, too. A bad world is that
+which he experiences and approves. A good world he does not want in which
+there would be no pity, courage, hope, fear, sorrow, joy&mdash;devotedness,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> in
+short&mdash;which he believes form the ultimate allowed to man; therefore it
+has been his policy not to do away with the evil in the society he is
+saving. To mitigate, not to cure, has been his aim.</p>
+
+<p>Browning would, himself, answer the sophistry, here, by showing that evil
+though permitted by divine power was only a means of good through man&#8217;s
+working against whatever he conceives to be evil with the whole strength
+of his being. To deliberately follow the policy of conserving evil would
+be in the end to annihilate the good. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau could
+not see so far as this.</p>
+
+<p>It is not astonishing that with such a policy as this his methods of
+carrying it out might seem somewhat dubious if not positively criminal.
+His departure from his early idealism is excused for the reason that
+idealism is not practicable when the region of talk is left for the real
+action of life. Every step in his own aggrandizement is apologized for on
+the ground that what needed to be accomplished could only be done by a
+strong hand and that strong hand his own. He was in fact an unprincipled
+utilitarian as Browning presents him, who spoiled even what virtue resides
+in utilitarianism by letting his care for saving society be too much
+influenced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> by his desire for personal glory. One ideal undertaking he
+permitted himself, the freeing of Italy from the Austrian yoke. But he was
+not strong enough for any such high flight of idealism, as the sequel
+proved.</p>
+
+<p>Browning does not bring out in the poem the Emperor&#8217;s real reasons for
+stopping short in the Italian campaign, which certainly were sufficient
+from a practical standpoint, but as Archibald Forbes says in his &#8220;Life of
+Napoleon,&#8221; should have been thought of before he published his program of
+freedom to Italy &#8220;from the Alps to the Adriatic.&#8221; &#8220;Even when he addressed
+the Italians at Milan,&#8221; continues Forbes, &#8220;the new light had not broken in
+upon him which revealed the strength of the quadrilateral, the cost of
+expelling the Austrians from Venetia, and the conviction that further
+French successes would certainly bring mobilized Germany into the field.
+That new light seems to have flashed upon Napoleon for the first time from
+the stern Austrian ranks on the day of Solferino. It was then he realized
+that should he go forward he would be obliged to attack in front an enemy
+entrenched behind great fortresses, and protected against any diversion on
+his flanks by the neutrality of the territories surrounding him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>Mrs. Browning, whose consternation and grief over Villafranca broke out in
+burning verse, yet made a defence of Napoleon&#8217;s action here which might
+have been worked into Browning&#8217;s poem with advantage. She wrote to John
+Foster that while Napoleon&#8217;s intervention in Italy overwhelmed her with
+joy it did not dazzle her into doubts as to the motive of it, &#8220;but
+satisfied a patient expectation and fulfilled a logical inference. Thus it
+did not present itself to my mind as a caprice of power, to be followed
+perhaps by an onslaught on Belgium and an invasion of England. Have we not
+watched for a year while every saddle of iniquity has been tried on the
+Napoleonic back, and nothing fitted? Wasn&#8217;t he to crush Piedmontese
+institutions like so many eggshells? Was he ever going away with his army,
+and hadn&#8217;t he occupied houses in Genoa with an intention of bombarding the
+city? Didn&#8217;t he keep troops in the north after Villafranca on purpose to
+come down on us with a grand duke or a Kingdom of Etruria and Plon-Plon to
+rule it? And wouldn&#8217;t he give back Bologna to the Pope?... Were not
+Cipriani, Farini and other patriots his &#8216;mere creatures&#8217; in treacherous
+correspondence with the Tuileries &#8216;doing his dirty work&#8217;?&#8221; Of such
+accusations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> as these the intelligent English journals were full, but she
+maintains that against &#8220;The Inane and Immense Absurd&#8221; from which they were
+born is to be set &#8220;a nation saved.&#8221; She realized also how hard Napoleon&#8217;s
+position in France must be to maintain &#8220;forty thousand priests with
+bishops of the color of Monseigneur d&#8217;Orleans and company, having, of
+course, a certain hold on the agricultural population which forms so large
+a part of the basis of the imperial throne. Then add to that the parties
+who use this Italian question as a weapon simply.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Many of Napoleon&#8217;s own statements have furnished Browning with the
+arguments used in the apology. After deliberately destroying the
+constitution, for example, and himself being the cause of the violence and
+bloodshed in Paris, he coolly addressed the people in the following
+strain, in which we certainly recognize Hohenstiel-Schwangau:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Frenchmen! the disturbances are appeased. Whatever may be the decision of
+the people, society is saved. The first part of my task is accomplished.
+The appeal to the nation, for the purpose of terminating the struggle of
+parties, I knew would not cause any serious risk to the public
+tranquillity. Why should the people have risen against me? If I do<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> not
+any longer possess your confidence&mdash;if your ideas are changed&mdash;there is no
+occasion to make precious blood flow; it will be sufficient to place an
+adverse vote in the urn. I shall always respect the decision of the
+people.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His cleverness in combining the idea of authority with that of the idea of
+obeying the will of the people is curiously illustrated in his speech at
+the close of his dictatorship, during which it must be confessed that he
+had done excellently well for the country&mdash;so well, indeed, that even the
+socialists were ready to cry &#8220;<i>Vive l&#8217;Empereur!</i>&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;While watching me re&euml;stablish the institutions and reawaken the
+memories of the Empire, people have repeated again and again that I
+wished to reconstitute the Empire itself. If this had been so the
+transformation would have been accomplished long ago; neither the
+means nor the opportunities would have been lacking.... But I have
+remained content with that I had. Resolved now, as heretofore, to do
+all in my power for France and nothing for myself, I would accept any
+modification of the present state of things only if forced by
+necessity.... If parties remain quiet, nothing shall be changed. But
+if they endeavor to sap the foundations of my government; if they deny
+the legitimacy of the result of the popular vote; if, in short, they
+continually put the future of the country in jeopardy, then, but only
+then, it might be prudent to ask the people for a new title which
+would irrevocably fix on my head the power with which they have
+already clothed me. But let us not anticipate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> difficulties; let us
+preserve the Republic. Under its banner I am anxious to inaugurate
+once more an epoch of reconciliation and pardon; and I call on all
+without distinction who will frankly co&ouml;perate with me for the public
+good.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>In contrast to such fair-sounding phrases Napoleon was capable of the most
+dishonorable tactics in order to gain his ends. Witness the episode of his
+tempting Bismarck with offers of an alliance against Austria at the same
+time that he was treating secretly with Francis Joseph for the cession of
+Venetia in return for Silesia. And while negotiating secretly and
+separately with these two sworn enemies, he pretended to be so
+disinterested as to suggest the submission of their quarrel to a European
+congress.</p>
+
+<p>Browning has certainly presented a good portrait of the man as the history
+of his own utterances contrasted with the history of his actions proves.
+In trying to bridge with this apology the discrepancies between the two he
+has, however, attributed to Louis Napoleon a degree of self-consciousness
+beyond any ever evinced by him. The principle of imperialism was a
+conviction with him. That he desired to help the people of France and to a
+great extent succeeded, is true; that he combined with this desire the
+desire of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> power for himself is true; that he used unscrupulous means to
+gain whatever end he desired when such were necessary is true; but that he
+was conscious of his own despicable traits to the extent that the poet
+makes him conscious of them is most unlikely. Nor is it likely that he
+would defend himself upon any such subtle ground as that his character and
+temperament being the gift of God he was bound to follow out his nature in
+order that God&#8217;s purposes might be accomplished. It is rather an
+explanation of his life from the philosopher&#8217;s or psychologist&#8217;s
+standpoint than a self-conscious revelation. It is none the less
+interesting on this account, while the scene setting gives it a thoroughly
+human and dramatic touch.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever may be said of Napoleon himself, his rule was fraught with
+consequences of import for the whole of Europe, not because of what he
+was, but because of what he was not. He was an object lesson on the
+fallacy of trying to govern so that all parties will be pleased by
+autocratically keeping each one from fully expressing itself. The result
+is that each grows more aware of the suppression than of the amount of
+freedom allowed to it, and nobody is pleased. When added to such a policy
+as this is the surmounting desire for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> power and the Machiavellian
+determination to attain it by any means, fair or foul, a principle of
+statecraft which by the middle of the century could not be practised in
+its most acute form without arousing the most severe criticism, his power
+carried within it the seeds of destruction.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that &#8220;never in the history of the world has one man
+undertaken a task more utterly beyond the power of mortal man than that
+which Louis Napoleon was pledged to carry through.&#8221; He professed to be at
+one and the same time the elect sovereign of the people, a son of the
+revolution, a champion of universal suffrage, and an adversary of the
+demagogues. In the first of these characters he was bound to justify his
+elevation by economic and social reforms, in his second character he had
+to destroy the last trace of political liberty. He had, in fact, assumed
+various utterly incompatible attitudes, and the day that the masses found
+themselves deceived in their expectations, and the middle classes found
+their interests were betrayed, reaction was inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img07.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">William Ewart Gladstone</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In spite of his heinous faults, however, historians have grown more and
+more inclined to admit that Napoleon filled for a time a necessary niche
+in the line of progress, just<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> that step which Browning makes him say
+the genius will recognize that he fills&mdash;namely, to</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Carry the incompleteness on a stage,<br />
+Make what was crooked straight, and roughness smooth,<br />
+And weakness strong: wherein if I succeed,<br />
+It will not prove the worst achievement, sure<br />
+In the eyes at least of one man, one I look<br />
+Nowise to catch in critic company:<br />
+To-wit, the man inspired, the genius, self<br />
+Destined to come and change things thoroughly.<br />
+He, at least, finds his business simplified,<br />
+Distinguishes the done from undone, reads<br />
+Plainly what meant and did not mean this time<br />
+We live in, and I work on, and transmit<br />
+To such successor: he will operate<br />
+On good hard substance, not mere shade and shine.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That is, at a time when Europe was seething with the idea of a new order,
+in which the ideal of nationality was to take the place of such decaying
+ideas as the divine right of kings, balance of power, and so on, Napoleon
+held on to these ideas just long enough to prevent a general
+disintegration of society. He held in his hands the balance of power until
+the nations began to find themselves, and in the case of Italy actually
+helped on the triumph of the new order.</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to note in this connection that one of the principal
+factors in the making of Gladstone into the stanch liberal which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> he
+became was the freeing of Italy, in which Napoleon had so large a share.
+Gladstone himself wrote in 1892 of the events which occurred in the fifth
+decade: &#8220;Of the various and important incidents which associated me almost
+unawares with foreign affairs ... I will only say that they all
+contributed to forward the action of those home causes more continuous in
+their operation, which, without in any way effacing my old sense of
+reverence for the past, determined for me my place in the present and my
+direction toward the future.&#8221; In 1859 Gladstone dined with Cavour at
+Turin, when the latter had the opportunity of explaining his position and
+policy to the man whom he considered &#8220;one of the sincerest and most
+important friends that Italy had.&#8221; But as his biographer says, Gladstone
+was still far from the glorified democracy of the Mazzinian propaganda,
+and expressed his opinion that England should take the stand that she
+would be glad if Italian unity proved feasible, &#8220;but the conditions of it
+must be gradually matured by a course of improvement in the several
+states, and by the political education of the people; if it cannot be
+reached by these means, it hardly will by any others; and certainly not by
+opinions which closely link Italian reconstruction with European
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>disorganization and general war.&#8221; Yet he was as distressed as Mrs.
+Browning at the peace of Villafranca, about which he wrote: &#8220;I little
+thought to have lived to see the day when the conclusion of a peace should
+in my own mind cause disgust rather than impart relief.&#8221; By the end of the
+year he thought better of Napoleon and expressed himself again somewhat in
+the same strain as Mrs. Browning, to the effect that the Emperor had
+shown, &#8220;though partial and inconsistent, indications of a genuine feeling
+for the Italians&mdash;and far beyond this he has committed himself very
+considerably to the Italian cause in the face of the world. When in reply
+to all that, we fling in his face the truce of Villafranca, he may
+reply&mdash;and the answer is not without force&mdash;that he stood single-handed in
+a cause when any moment Europe might have stood combined against him. We
+gave him verbal sympathy and encouragement, or at least criticism; no one
+else gave him anything at all. No doubt he showed then that he had
+undertaken a work to which his powers were unequal; but I do not think
+that, when fairly judged, he can be said to have given proof by that
+measure of insincerity or indifference.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Gladstone&#8217;s gradual and forceful emancipation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> into the ranks of the
+liberals may be followed in the fascinating pages of Morley&#8217;s &#8220;Life,&#8221; who
+at the end declares that his performances in the sphere of active
+government were beyond comparison. Gladstone&#8217;s own summary of his career
+gives a glimpse of what these performances were as well as an
+interpretation of the century and England&#8217;s future growth which indicate
+that had he had another twenty years in which to progress, perhaps fewer,
+he would beyond all doubt have become an out and out social democrat.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;The public aspect of the period which closes for me with the fourteen
+years (so I love to reckon them) of my formal connection with
+Midlothian is too important to pass without a word. I consider it as
+beginning with the Reform Act of Lord Grey&#8217;s government. That great
+act was for England, improvement and extension: for Scotland it was
+political birth, the beginning of a duty and a power, neither of which
+had attached to the Scottish nation in the preceding period. I rejoice
+to think how the solemnity of that duty has been recognized, and how
+that power has been used. The threescore years offer as the pictures
+of what the historian will recognize as a great legislative and
+administrative period&mdash;perhaps, on the whole, the greatest in our
+annals. It has been predominantly a history of emancipation&mdash;that is,
+of enabling man to do his work of emancipation, political, economical,
+social, moral, intellectual. Not numerous merely, but almost
+numberless, have been the causes brought to issue, and in every one of
+them I rejoice<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> to think that, so far as my knowledge goes, Scotland
+has done battle for the right.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Another period has opened and is opening still&mdash;a period possibly of
+yet greater moral dangers, certainly a great ordeal for those classes
+which are now becoming largely conscious of power, and never
+heretofore subject to its deteriorating influences. These have been
+confined in their actions to the classes above them, because they were
+its sole possessors. Now is the time for the true friend of his
+country to remind the masses that their present political elevation is
+owing to no principles less broad and noble than these&mdash;the love of
+liberty, of liberty for all without distinction of class, creed or
+country, <i>and the resolute preference of the interests of the whole</i>
+to any interest, be it what it may, of a narrower scope.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Gladstone entered Parliament at twenty-three, in 1832, and a year
+later Browning, at twenty-one, printed his first poem, &#8220;Pauline.&#8221; The
+careers of the two men ran nearly parallel, for Browning died in 1889, on
+the day of the publication of his last volume of poems, and Gladstone&#8217;s
+retirement from active life took place in 1894, shortly after the defeat
+of his second Home Rule Bill. Though there is nothing to show that these
+two men came into touch with each other during their life, and while it is
+probable that Browning would not have been in sympathy with many of the
+aspects of Gladstone&#8217;s mentality, there is an undercurrent of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>similarity
+in their attitude of mind toward reform. The passage in &#8220;Sordello&#8221; already
+referred to, written in 1840, might be regarded almost as a prophecy of
+the sort of leader Gladstone became. I have said of that passage that it
+expressed the ideal of the opportunist, not that of the revolutionary.
+Opportunist Mr. Gladstone was often called by captious critics, but any
+unbiased reader following his career now as a whole will see, as Morley
+points out, that whenever there was a chance of getting anything done it
+was generally found that he was the only man with courage and resolution
+enough to attempt it.</p>
+
+<p>A distinction should be made between that sort of opportunism which
+<i>waits</i> upon the growth of conditions favorable to the taking of a short
+step in amelioration, and what might be called militant opportunism,
+which, at all times, seizes every opportunity to take a step in the
+direction of an evolving, all-absorbing ideal. Is not this the opportunism
+of both a Browning and a Gladstone? Such a policy at least tacitly
+acknowledges that the law of evolution is the law that should be followed,
+and that the mass of the people as well as the leader have their share in
+the unfolding of the coming ideal, though their part in it may be less
+conscious than his and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> though they may need his leadership to make the
+steps by the way clear.</p>
+
+<p>The other political leader of the Victorian era with whom Gladstone came
+most constantly into conflict was Disraeli, of whom Browning in &#8220;George
+Bubb Dodington&#8221; has given a sketch in order to draw a contrast between the
+unsuccessful policy of a charlatan of the Dodington type and that of one
+like Disraeli. The skeptical multitude of to-day cannot be taken in by
+declarations that the politician is working only for their good, and if he
+frankly acknowledged that he is working also for his own good they would
+have none of him. The nice point to be decided is how shall he work for
+his own good and yet gain control of the multitude. Dodington did not know
+the secret, but according to Browning Disraeli did, and what is the
+secret? It seems to be an attitude of absolute self-assurance, a disregard
+of consistency, a scorn of the people he is dealing with, and a pose
+suggesting the play of supernatural forces in his life.</p>
+
+<p>This is a true enough picture of the real Disraeli, who seems to have had
+a leaning toward a belief in spiritualism, and who was notorious for his
+unblushing changes of opinion and for a style of oratory in which his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+points were made by clever invective and sarcasm hurled at his opponents
+instead of by any sound, logical argument, it being, indeed one of his
+brilliant discoveries that &#8220;wisdom ought to be concealed under folly, and
+consistency under caprice.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Many choice bits of history might be given in illustration of Browning&#8217;s
+portrayal of him; for example, speaking against reform, he exclaims:
+&#8220;Behold the late Prime Minister and the Reform Ministry! The spirited and
+snow-white steeds have gradually changed into an equal number of sullen
+and obstinate donkeys, while Mr. Merryman, who, like the Lord Chancellor,
+was once the very life of the ring, now lies his despairing length in the
+middle of the stage, with his jokes exhausted and his bottle empty.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As a specimen of his quickness in retort may be cited an account of an
+episode which occurred at the time when he came out as the champion of the
+Taunton Blues. In the course of his speech he &#8220;enunciated,&#8221; says an
+anonymous writer of the fifties, &#8220;one of those daring historical paradoxes
+which are so signally characteristic of the man: &#8216;Twenty years ago&#8217; said
+the Taunton Blue hero, &#8216;tithes were paid in Ireland more regularly than
+now!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>&#8220;Even his supporters appeared astounded by this declaration.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;How do you know?&#8217; shouted an elector.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I have read it,&#8217; replied Mr. Disraeli.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Oh, oh!&#8217; exclaimed the elector.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I know it,&#8217; retorted Disraeli, &#8216;because I have read, and you&#8217; (looking
+daggers at his questioner) &#8216;have not.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This was considered a very happy rejoinder by the friends of the
+candidate, and was loudly cheered by the Blues.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Didn&#8217;t you write a novel?&#8217; again asked the importunate elector, not very
+much frightened even by Mr. Disraeli&#8217;s oratorical thunder and the
+sardonical expression on his face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I have certainly written a novel,&#8217; Mr. Disraeli replied; &#8216;but I hope
+there is no disgrace in being connected with literature.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;You are a curiosity of literature, you are,&#8217; said the humorous elector.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I hope,&#8217; said Mr. Disraeli, with great indignation, &#8216;there is no
+disgrace in having written that which has been read by hundreds of
+thousands of my fellow-countrymen, and which has been translated into
+every European language. I trust that one who is an author by the gift of
+nature may be as good a man as one who is Master of the Mint by the gift<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+of Lord Melbourne.&#8217; Great applause then burst forth from the Blues. Mr.
+Disraeli continued, &#8216;I am not, however, the puppet of the Duke of
+Buckingham, as one newspaper has described me; while a fellow laborer in
+the same vineyard designated me the next morning, &#8220;the Marleybone
+Radical.&#8221; If there is anything on which I figure myself it is my
+consistency.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Oh, oh!&#8217; exclaimed many hearers.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I am prepared to prove it,&#8217; said Mr. Disraeli, with menacing energy. &#8216;I
+am prepared to prove it, and always shall be, either in the House of
+Commons or on the hustings, considering the satisfactory manner in which I
+have been attacked, but I do not think the attack will be repeated.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It seems extraordinary that such tactics of bluff could take a man onward
+to the supreme place of Prime Minister. Possibly it was just as much owing
+to his power to amuse as to any of the causes brought out by Browning. Is
+there anything the majority of mankind loves more than a laugh?</p>
+
+<p>The conflicts of Disraeli and Gladstone form one of the most remarkable
+episodes of nineteenth-century politics. One is tempted to draw a parallel
+between Napoleon III and Disraeli, whose tactics were much the same,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+except that Disraeli was backed up by a much keener intellect. Possibly he
+held a part in English politics similar to that held by Napoleon in
+European politics&mdash;that is, he conserved the influences of the past long
+enough to make the future more sure of itself. Browning, however,
+evidently considered him nothing more than a successful charlatan.</p>
+
+<p>When Browning wrote, &#8220;Why I Am a Liberal,&#8221; in 1885, liberalism in English
+politics had reached its climax in the nineteenth century through the
+introduction by Mr. Gladstone, then Premier for the third time, of his
+Home Rule Bill. The injustices suffered by the Irish people and the
+horrible atrocities resulting from these had had their effect upon Mr.
+Gladstone and had taken him the last great step in his progress toward
+freedom. The meeting at which this bill was introduced has been described
+as the greatest legislative assembly of modern times. The House was full
+to overflowing, and in a brilliant speech of nearly four hours the veteran
+leader held his audience breathless as he unfolded his plans for the
+betterment of Irish conditions. We are told that during the debates that
+followed there was a remarkable exhibition of feeling&mdash;&#8220;the passions, the
+enthusiasm, the fear, and hope, and fury and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> exultation, sweeping, now
+the surface, now stirring to its depths the great gathering.&#8221; The bill,
+which included, besides the founding of an Irish Parliament in Dublin,
+which would have the power to deal with all matters &#8220;save the Crown, the
+Army and Navy, Foreign and Colonial Policy, Trade, Navigation, Currency,
+Imperial Taxation, and the Endowment of Churches,&#8221; also provided that
+Ireland should annually contribute to the English exchequer the sum of
+&pound;3,243,000.</p>
+
+<p>Eloquence, enthusiasm, exultation&mdash;all came to naught. The bill did not
+even suit the liberals, the bargain from a financial point of view being
+regarded as hard. It was defeated in Parliament and fared no better when
+an appeal was made to the country, and Mr. Gladstone resigned. In nine
+months, however, a general election returned him to office again, and
+again he introduced a Home Rule Bill, and though it passed the Commons, it
+was overwhelmingly defeated in the House of Lords.</p>
+
+<p>It is pleasant to reflect that in this last act of a noble and brilliant
+career spent in the interests of the ever-growing ideals of democracy
+Gladstone had the sympathy of Browning, shown by his emphatic expression
+of &#8220;liberal sentiments&#8221; at a momentous crisis,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> when a speech on the
+liberal side even from the mouth of a poet counted for much.</p>
+
+<p>As we have seen, the reflections in Browning&#8217;s poetry of his interest in
+public affairs are comparatively few, yet such glimpses as he has given
+prove him, beyond all doubt, to have been a democrat in principle, to have
+arrived, in fact, at the beginning of his career at a point beyond that
+attained by England&#8217;s rulers at the end of the century. This far-sighted
+vision of his may have been another reason to be added to those mentioned
+at the beginning of the chapter why his interest in the practical affairs
+of his country did not more often express itself. The wrangling, the
+inconsequentialness, the eloquence expended upon mere personal interests
+which make up by far the larger proportion of all political agitation, are
+irritating to the last degree to a man of vision. His part was that of the
+philosopher and artist&mdash;to watch and to record in the portrayal of his
+many characters the underlying principle of freedom, which was the guiding
+star in all his work.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+<p class="title">SOCIAL IDEALS</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Browning&#8217;s</span> social ideals revolve about a trinity of values: the value of
+love, the value of truth, the value of evil. His ethics are the natural
+outgrowth of his mysticism and his idealism, with no touch of the
+utilitarianism which has been a distinctive mark of the fabric of English
+society during the nineteenth century, nor, on the other hand, of the
+hidebound conventionalism which has limited personal freedom in ways
+detrimental to just those aspects of social morality it was most anxious
+to preserve.</p>
+
+<p>The fact of which Browning seemed more conscious than of any other fact of
+his existence, and which, as we have seen, was the very core of his
+mysticism, was feeling. Things about which an ordinary man would feel no
+emotion at all start in his mind a train of thoughts, ending only in the
+perception of divine love. The eating of a palatable fig fills his heart
+with such gratefulness to the giver of the fig that immediately he fares<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+forth upon the way which brings him into the presence of the Prime Giver
+from whom all gifts are received. What ecstasy of feeling in the artist
+aspiring through his art to the higher regions of Absolute Beauty in &#8220;Abt
+Vogler&#8221; of the poet who loves, aspiring to the divine through his human
+love in the epilogue to &#8220;Ferishtah&#8217;s Fancies!&#8221; The perception of feeling
+was so intense that it became in him exalted and concentrated, incapable
+of dissipating itself in ephemeral sentimentalities, and this it is which
+gives feeling to Browning its mystical quality, and puts personal love
+upon the plane of a veritable revelation.</p>
+
+<p>Though reports have often floated about in regard to his attachments to
+other women after Mrs. Browning&#8217;s death, the fact remains that he did not
+marry again, that he wrote the lyrics in &#8220;Ferishtah&#8217;s Fancies,&#8221; and the
+sonnet to Edward Fitzgerald just before his death, and thirty years after
+his wife&#8217;s death. Moreover, in the epilogue to &#8220;The Two Poets of Croisic&#8221;
+he gives a hint of what might be his attitude toward any other women who
+may have come into his life, in the application of the tale of the cricket
+chirping &#8220;love&#8221; in the place of the broken string of a poet&#8217;s lyre&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+&#8220;For as victory was nighest,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">While I sang and played,</span><br />
+With my lyre at lowest, highest,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Right alike&mdash;one string that made</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Love sound soft was snapt in twain,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Never to be heard again,&mdash;&mdash;</span><br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Had not a kind cricket fluttered,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Perched upon the place</span><br />
+Vacant left, and duly uttered,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8216;Love, Love, Love,&#8217; when&#8217;er the bass</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Asked the treble to atone</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For its somewhat sombre drone.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>These rare qualities of constancy, exaltation and aspiration, in love
+sublimating it into a spiritual emotion, which was evidently the
+distinctive mark of Browning&#8217;s personality on the emotional side,
+furnishes the keynote by which his presentation or solution of the social
+problems involved in the relations of men and women is always to be
+gauged.</p>
+
+<p>He had been writing ten years when he essayed his first serious
+presentation of what we might to-day call a problem play on an English
+subject in &#8220;A Blot in the &#8217;Scutcheon.&#8221; In all of his long poems and in
+many of his short ones personal love had been portrayed under various
+conditions&mdash;between friends or lovers, husband and wife,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> or father and
+son, and in every instance it is a dominating influence in the action, as
+we have already seen it to be in &#8220;Strafford.&#8221; Again, in &#8220;King Victor and
+King Charles&#8221; the action centers upon Charles&#8217;s love for his father, and
+is also moulded in many ways by Polyxena&#8217;s love for her husband, Charles.</p>
+
+<p>But a perception of the possible heights to be obtained by the passion of
+romantic love only fully emerges in &#8220;Pippa Passes,&#8221; for example in
+Ottima&#8217;s vision of the reality of her own love, despite her great sin as
+contrasted with that of Sebald&#8217;s, and in Jules&#8217;s rising above the
+conventionally low when he discovers he has been duped, and perceiving in
+Phene a purity of soul which no earthly conditions had been able to sully,</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Who, what is Lutwyche, what Natalia&#8217;s friends,<br />
+What the whole world except our love&mdash;my own,<br />
+Own Phene?...<br />
+I do but break these paltry models up<br />
+To begin art afresh ...<br />
+Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!<br />
+Like a god going through the world there stands<br />
+One mountain for a moment in the dusk,<br />
+Whole brotherhoods of cedars on its brow:<br />
+And you are ever by me while I gaze<br />
+&mdash;Are in my arms as now&mdash;as now&mdash;as now!<br />
+Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!<br />
+Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>Again, in &#8220;The Return of the Druses&#8221; there is a complicated clash between
+the ideal of religious reverence for the incarnation of divinity in Djabal
+and human love for him in the soul of Anael, resulting at the end in the
+destruction of the idea of Djabal&#8217;s supernatural divinity, and his
+reinstatement perceived by Anael as divine through the complete exaltation
+of his human love for Anael.</p>
+
+<p>These examples, however, while they illustrate Browning&#8217;s attitude toward
+human love, are far enough removed from nineteenth-century conditions in
+England. In &#8220;Pippa,&#8221; the social conditions of nineteenth-century Italy are
+reflected; in &#8220;The Druses,&#8221; the religious conditions of the Druse nation
+in the fifteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>In the &#8220;Blot in the &#8217;Scutcheon&#8221; a situation is developed which comes home
+forcibly to the nineteenth-century Englishman despite the fact that the
+scene is supposed to be laid in the eighteenth century. The poet&#8217;s
+treatment of the clash between the ideal, cherished by an old and honored
+aristocratic family of its own immaculate purity, and the spontaneous,
+complete and exalted love of the two young people who in their ecstasy
+transcend conventions, illustrates, as perhaps no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> other situation could,
+his reverential attitude upon the subject of love. Gwendolen, the older,
+intuitional woman, and Mertoun, the young lover, are the only people in
+the play to realize that purity may exist although the social enactments
+upon which it is supposed to depend have not been complied with. Tresham
+learns it only when he has wounded Mertoun unto death; Mildred never
+learns it. The grip of conventional teaching has sunk so deeply into her
+nature that she feels her sin unpardonable and only to be atoned for by
+death. Mertoun, as he dies, gives expression to the essential purity and
+truth of his nature in these words:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 13em;">&#8220;Die along with me,</span><br />
+Dear Mildred! &#8217;tis so easy, and you&#8217;ll &#8217;scape<br />
+So much unkindness! Can I lie at rest,<br />
+With rude speech spoken to you, ruder deeds<br />
+Done to you?&mdash;heartless men shall have my heart<br />
+And I tied down with grave-clothes and the worm,<br />
+Aware, perhaps, of every blow&mdash;O God!&mdash;<br />
+Upon those lips&mdash;yet of no power to bear<br />
+The felon stripe by stripe! Die Mildred! Leave<br />
+Their honorable world to them! For God<br />
+We&#8217;re good enough, though the world casts us out.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This is only one of many instances which go to show that Browning&#8217;s
+conception of love might include, on the one hand, a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>complete freedom
+from the trammels imposed upon it by conventional codes of morality, but
+on the other, was so real and permanent a sympathy between two souls, and
+so absolute a revelation of divine beauty, that its morality far
+transcended that of the conventional codes, which under the guise of
+lawful alliances permit and even encourage marriages based upon the most
+external of attractions, or those entered into for merely social or
+commercial reasons. A sin against love seems in Browning&#8217;s eyes to come
+the nearest of all human failings to the unpardonable sin.</p>
+
+<p>It must not be supposed from what has been said that he had any
+anarchistic desire to do away with the solemnization of marriage, but his
+eyes were wide open to the fact that there might be sin within the
+marriage bond, and just as surely that there might be love pure and true
+outside of it.</p>
+
+<p>Another illustration of Browning&#8217;s belief in the existence of a love such
+as Shakespeare describes, which looks on tempests and is never shaken, is
+given in the &#8220;Inn Album.&#8221; Here, again, the characters are all English, and
+the story is based upon an actual occurrence. Such changes as Browning
+has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> made in the story are with the intention of pitting against the
+villainy of an aristocratic seducer of the lowest type a bourgeois young
+man, who has been in love with the betrayed woman, and who when he finds
+out that it was this man, his friend, who had stood between them, does not
+swerve from his loyalty and truth to her, and in the end avenges her by
+killing the aristocratic villain. The young man is betrothed to a girl he
+cares nothing for, the woman has married a man she cares nothing for. All
+is of no moment in the presence of a genuine loyal emotion which shows
+itself capable of a life of devotion with no thought of reward.</p>
+
+<p>Browning has nowhere translated into more noble action the love of a man
+than in the passage where the hero of the story gives himself unselfishly
+to the woman who has been so deeply wronged:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">&#8220;Take heart of hers,</span><br />
+And give her hand of mine with no more heart<br />
+Than now, you see upon this brow I strike!<br />
+What atom of a heart do I retain<br />
+Not all yours? Dear, you know it! Easily<br />
+May she accord me pardon when I place<br />
+My brow beneath her foot, if foot so deign,<br />
+Since uttermost indignity is spared&mdash;<br />
+Mere marriage and no love! And all this time<br />
+Not one word to the purpose! Are you free?<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>Only wait! only let me serve&mdash;deserve<br />
+Where you appoint and how you see the good!<br />
+I have the will&mdash;perhaps the power&mdash;at least<br />
+Means that have power against the world. Fortune&mdash;<br />
+Take my whole life for your experiment!<br />
+If you are bound&mdash;in marriage, say&mdash;why, still,<br />
+Still, sure, there&#8217;s something for a friend to do,<br />
+Outside? A mere well-wisher, understand!<br />
+I&#8217;ll sit, my life long, at your gate, you know,<br />
+Swing it wide open to let you and him<br />
+Pass freely,&mdash;and you need not look, much less<br />
+Fling me a &#8216;<i>Thank you!&mdash;are you there, old friend?</i>&#8217;<br />
+Don&#8217;t say that even: I should drop like shot!<br />
+So I feel now, at least: some day, who knows?<br />
+After no end of weeks and months and years<br />
+You might smile! &#8216;<i>I believe you did your best!</i>&#8217;<br />
+And that shall make my heart leap&mdash;leap such leap<br />
+As lands the feet in Heaven to wait you there!<br />
+Ah, there&#8217;s just one thing more! How pale you look!<br />
+Why? Are you angry? If there&#8217;s after all,<br />
+Worst come to worst&mdash;if still there somehow be<br />
+The shame&mdash;I said was no shame,&mdash;none, I swear!&mdash;<br />
+In that case, if my hand and what it holds,&mdash;<br />
+My name,&mdash;might be your safeguard now,&mdash;at once&mdash;<br />
+Why, here&#8217;s the hand&mdash;you have the heart.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The genuine lovers in Browning&#8217;s gallery will occur to every reader of
+Browning: lovers who are not deterred by obstacles, like Norbert, lovers
+like Miranda, devoted to a woman with a &#8220;past&#8221;; like the lover in &#8220;One Way
+of Love,&#8221; who still can say, &#8220;Those who win heaven, blest are they.&#8221;
+Sometimes there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> is a problem to be solved, sometimes not. Whenever there
+is a problem, however, it is solved by Browning on the side of sincerity
+and truth, never on the side of convention.</p>
+
+<p>Take, for example, &#8220;The Statue and the Bust,&#8221; which many have considered
+to uphold an immoral standard and of which its defenders declare that the
+moral point of the story lies not in the fact that the lady and the Duke
+wished to elope with each other but that they never had strength enough of
+mind to do so. Considering what an entirely conventional and loveless
+marriage this of the lady and the Duke evidently was we cannot suppose, in
+the light of Browning&#8217;s solution of similar situations, that he would have
+thought it any great crime if the Duke and the lady had eloped, since
+there was so genuine an attraction between them. But he does word his
+climax, it must be confessed, in a way to leave a loophole of doubt on the
+subject for those who do not like to be scandalized by their Browning:
+&#8220;Let a man contend to the uttermost for his life&#8217;s set prize, be it what
+it will!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There is a saving grace to be extracted from the last line.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+&#8220;&mdash;The sin I impute to each frustrate ghost<br />
+Is&mdash;the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,<br />
+Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In &#8220;The Ring and the Book,&#8221; the problem is similar to that in the &#8220;Inn
+Album,&#8221; except that the villain in the case is the lawful husband. The
+lover, Caponsacchi, under different conditions demanding that he shall not
+give the slightest expression to his love, rises to a reverential height
+which even some of Browning&#8217;s readers seem to doubt as possible.
+Caponsacchi is, however, too much under the spell of Catholic theology to
+see the mystical meaning of the love which he acknowledges in his own soul
+for Pompilia. In this poem it is Pompilia who is given the divine vision.
+If I may resay what I have said in another connection,<small><a name="f3.1" id="f3.1" href="#f3">[3]</a></small> there is no
+moral struggle in Pompilia&#8217;s short life such as that in Caponsacchi&#8217;s.
+Both were alike in the fact that up to a certain point in their lives
+their full consciousness was unawakened: hers slept, through innocence and
+ignorance; his, in spite of knowledge, through lack of aspiration. She was
+rudely awakened by suffering; he by the sudden revelation of a possible
+ideal. Therefore, while for him, conscious of his past failures, a
+struggle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> begins: for her, conscious of no failure in her duty, which she
+had always followed according to her light, there simply continues duty
+according to the new light. Neither archbishop nor friendly &#8220;smiles and
+shakes of head&#8221; could weaken her conviction that, being estranged in soul
+from her husband, her attitude toward him was inevitable. No qualms of
+conscience troubled her as to her inalienable right to fly from him. That
+she submitted as long as she did was only because no one could be found to
+aid her. And how quick and certain her defence of Caponsacchi, threatened
+by Guido, when he overtakes them at the Inn! As she thinks over it calmly
+afterward, she makes no apology, but justifies her action as the voice of
+God.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;If I sinned so&mdash;never obey voice more.<br />
+O, the Just and Terrible, who bids us &#8216;Bear.&#8217;<br />
+Not&mdash;&#8216;Stand by; bear to see my angels bear!&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The gossip over her flight with Caponsacchi does not trouble her as it
+does him. He saved her in her great need; the supposition that their
+motives for flight had any taint of impurity in them is too puerile to be
+given a thought, yet with the same sublime certainty of the right,
+characteristic of her, she acknowledges, at the end, her love for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>Caponsacchi, and looks for its fulfilment in the future when marriage
+shall be an interpenetration of souls that know themselves into one.
+Having attained so great a good she can wish none of the evil she has
+suffered undone. She goes a step farther. Not only does she accept her own
+suffering for the sake of the final supreme good to herself, but she feels
+assured that good will fall at last to those who worked the evil.</p>
+
+<p>In her absolute certainty of her realization of an unexpressed love in a
+future existence, she is only equaled in Browning&#8217;s poetry by the speaker
+in &#8220;Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That Browning&#8217;s belief in the mystical quality of personal love never
+changed is shown by the fact that near the end of his life, in the
+&#8220;Parleying&#8221; with Daniel Bartoli, he treats a love romance based upon fact
+in a way to emphasize this same truth which so constantly appears in his
+earlier work. The lady in this case, who is of the people, having been
+offered a bribe by the King which will mean the dishonoring of herself and
+her husband, and which if she does not accept will mean her complete
+separation from her husband, instantly decides against the bribe. She
+prefers love in spirit in a convent to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> accepting of the King&#8217;s
+promise that she will be made much of in court if she will sign a paper
+agreeing that her husband shall at once cede his dukedoms to the King. She
+explains her attitude to the Duke, who hesitates in his decision,
+whereupon she leaves and saves his honor for him, but his inability to
+decide at once upon the higher ground of spiritual love reveals to her the
+inadequacy of his love as compared with her own and kills her love for
+him. She later, however, marries a man who was only a boy of ten at the
+time of this episode, and their life together was a dream of happiness.
+But she dies and the devoted husband becomes a man of the world again. The
+Duke, however, has a streak of genuineness in his nature after all.
+Although carried away by the charms of a bold, black-eyed, tall creature,
+a development in keeping with the nature of the Duke in the true story,
+Browning is equal to the occasion, and makes him declare that the real man
+in him is dead and is still faithful to the old love. All she has is his
+ghost. Some day his soul will again be called into life by his ideal love.</p>
+
+<p>The poet frequently expresses a doubt of man&#8217;s power to be faithful to the
+letter in case of a wife&#8217;s death. &#8220;Any wife to any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> husband&#8221; reveals that
+feeling as it comes to a woman. The poet&#8217;s answer to this doubt is
+invariably, that where the love was true other attraction is a makeshift
+by which a desolate life is made tolerable, or, as in &#8220;Fifine at the
+Fair,&#8221; an ephemeral indulgence in pleasure which does not touch the
+reality of the spiritual love.</p>
+
+<p>Browning was well aware that the ordinary woman had a stronger sense of
+the eternal in love than the ordinary man. In relation to the Duke in the
+poem previously mentioned he remarks:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;One leans to like the duke, too; up we&#8217;ll patch<br />
+Some sort of saintship for him&mdash;not to match<br />
+Hers&mdash;but man&#8217;s best and woman&#8217;s worst amount<br />
+So nearly to the same thing, that we count<br />
+In man a miracle of faithfulness<br />
+If, while unfaithful somewhat, he lay stress<br />
+On the main fact that love, when love indeed,<br />
+Is wholly solely love from first to last&mdash;<br />
+Truth&mdash;all the rest a lie.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It may be said that all this is the romantic love about which the poets
+have always sung, and has as much existence in real life as the ideal of
+disinterested helpfulness to lovelorn damsels sung about in the days of
+chivalry. True, others have sung of the exaltation and the immortality of
+love, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> few have been those who have found it, but nowhere has the
+distinctively human side been touched with such reverence as in Browning.
+It is not Beatrice translated into a divine personage to be adored by a
+worshipping devotee, but a wholly human woman who loves and is loved, who
+touches divinity in Browning&#8217;s mind. Human love is then not an impossible
+ideal of which he writes in poetic language existing only in the realm of
+fancy; it is a living religion, bringing those who love nearer to God
+through the exaltation of their feeling than any other revelation of the
+human soul. Other states of consciousness reveal to humanity the existence
+of the absolute, but this gives a premonition of what divine love may have
+in store for the aspiring soul.</p>
+
+<p>In holding to such an ideal of love as this Browning has ranged himself
+entirely apart from the main tendencies of thought of the century, on the
+relations of men and women, which have, on the one hand, been wholly
+conventional, marriage being a contract under the law binding for life
+except in cases of definite breaches of conduct, and under the Church of
+affection which is binding only for life; and have, on the other hand,
+gone extreme lengths in the advocacy of entire freedom in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> the relations
+of the sexes. The first degrades love by making it too much a matter of
+law, the second by making it an ephemeral passion from which almost
+everything truly beautiful in the relationship of two human beings is, of
+necessity, eliminated.</p>
+
+<p>To either of these extreme factions Browning&#8217;s attitude is equally
+incomprehensible. The first cries out against his liberalness, the second,
+declaring that human emotion should be untrammeled by either Church, law
+or God, would find him a pernicious influence against freedom; there are,
+however, many shades of opinion between the two extremes which would feel
+sympathy with his ideals in one or more directions.</p>
+
+<p>The chief difficulty in the acceptance of the ideal for most people is
+that they have not yet developed to the plane where feeling comes to them
+with the intensity, the concentration, the depth or the constancy that
+brings with it the sense of revelation. For many people law or the Church
+is absolutely necessary to preserve such feeling as they are capable of
+from dissipating itself in shallow sentimentalism; while one or the other
+will always be necessary in some form because love has its social as well
+as its personal aspect.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>Yet the law and the Church should both allow sufficient freedom for the
+breaking of relations from which all sincerity has departed, even though
+humanity as a whole has not yet and probably will not for many ages arrive
+at Browning&#8217;s conception of human love.</p>
+
+<p>Truth to one&#8217;s own highest vision in love being a cardinal principle with
+Browning, it follows that truth to one&#8217;s nature in any direction is
+desirable. He even carries this doctrine of truth to the individual nature
+so far as to base upon it an apology for the most unmitigated villain he
+has portrayed, Guido, and to put this apology into the mouth of the person
+he had most deeply wronged, Pompilia. With exquisite vision she, even, can
+say:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;But where will God be absent! In his face<br />
+Is light, but in his shadow healing too:<br />
+Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed!<br />
+And as my presence was unfortunate,&mdash;<br />
+My earthly good, temptation and a snare,&mdash;<br />
+Nothing about me but drew somehow down<br />
+His hate upon me,&mdash;somewhat so excused<br />
+Therefore, since hate was thus the truth of him,&mdash;<br />
+May my evanishment for evermore<br />
+Help further to relieve the heart that cast<br />
+Such object of its natural loathing forth!<br />
+So he was made; he nowise made himself:<br />
+I could not love him, but his mother did.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>It is this notion that every nature must express its own truth which
+underlies a poem like &#8220;Fifine at the Fair.&#8221; Through expressing the truth
+of itself, and so grasping at half truths, even at the false, it finally
+reaches a higher truth. A nature like Guido&#8217;s was not born with a faculty
+for development. He simply had to live out his own hate. The man in
+&#8220;Fifine&#8221; had the power of perceiving an ideal, but not the power of living
+up to it without experimentation upon lower planes of living, probably the
+most common type of man to-day. There are others like Norbert or Mertoun,
+in whom the ideal truth is the real truth of their natures and for whom
+life means the constant expansion of this ideal truth within them. In many
+of the varying types of men and women portrayed by Browning there is the
+recognition of the possibility of psychic development either by means of
+experience or by sudden intuitions, and if, as in the case of Guido, there
+is no development in this life, there is hope in a future existence in a
+universe ruled by a God of love.</p>
+
+<p>In his views upon human character and its possibilities of development
+Browning is, of course, in touch with the scientific views on the subject
+which filled the air in all later nineteenth-century thought, changing the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>orthodox ideal of a static humanity born in sin and only to be saved by
+belief in certain dogmas to that of a humanity born to develop; changing
+the notion that sin was a terrible and absolutely defined entity, against
+which every soul had ceaselessly to war, into the notion that sin is a
+relative evil, consequent upon lack of development, which, as the human
+soul advances on its path, led by its inborn consciousness of the divine
+to be attained, will gradually disappear.</p>
+
+<p>But the evil which results from this lack of development in individuals to
+other individuals, and to society at large, brings a problem which as we
+have already seen in the first chapter is not so easy of solution. Yet
+Browning solves it, for is it not through the combat with this evil that
+the soul is given its real opportunity for development? Pain and suffering
+give rise to the thirst for happiness and joy, and through the arousing of
+sympathy and pity, the desire that others shall have happiness and joy,
+therefore to be despairing and pessimistic about evil or to wish for its
+immediate annihilation would really be suicidal to the best interests of
+the human race; nay, he even goes farther than this, as is hinted in one
+of his last poems, &#8220;Rephan,&#8221; and imagines that any other state than one
+of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> flux between good and evil would be monotonous:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Startle me up, by an Infinite<br />
+Discovered above and below me&mdash;height<br />
+And depth alike to attract my flight,<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Repel my descent: by hate taught love.<br />
+Oh, gain were indeed to see above<br />
+Supremacy ever&mdash;to move, remove,<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Not reach&mdash;aspire yet never attain<br />
+To the object aimed at! Scarce in vain,&mdash;<br />
+As each stage I left nor touched again.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;To suffer, did pangs bring the loved one bliss,<br />
+Wring knowledge from ignorance:&mdash;just for this&mdash;<br />
+To add one drop to a love&mdash;abyss!<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Enough: for you doubt, you hope, O men,<br />
+You fear, you agonize, die: what then?<br />
+Is an end to your life&#8217;s work out of ken?<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Have you no assurance that, earth at end,<br />
+Wrong will prove right? Who made shall mend<br />
+In the higher sphere to which yearnings tend?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In his attitude toward the existence of evil Browning takes issue with
+Carlyle, as already noted in the second chapter. Carlyle, as Browning
+represents him, cannot reconcile the existence of evil with beneficent and
+omniscient power. He makes the opponent, who is an echo of Carlyle in the
+argument in &#8220;Bernard de Mandeville,&#8221; exclaim:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">&#8220;Where&#8217;s</span><br />
+Knowledge, where power and will in evidence<br />
+&#8217;Tis Man&#8217;s-play merely! Craft foils rectitude,<br />
+Malignity defeats beneficence,<br />
+And grant, at very last of all, the feud<br />
+&#8217;Twixt good and evil ends, strange thoughts intrude<br />
+Though good be garnered safely and good&#8217;s foe<br />
+Bundled for burning. Thoughts steal even so&mdash;<br />
+Why grant tares leave to thus o&#8217;ertop, o&#8217;ertower<br />
+Their field-mate, boast the stalk and flaunt the flower,<br />
+Triumph one sunny minute?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>No attempt must be made to show God&#8217;s reason for allowing evil. Any such
+attempt will fail. This passage comes as near as any in Browning to a
+plunge into the larger social questions which during the nineteenth
+century have come more and more to the front, and is an index of just
+where the poet stood in relation to the social movements of the century&#8217;s
+end. His gaze was so centered upon the individual and the power of the
+individual to work out his own salvation and the need of evil in the
+process that his philosophical attitude toward evil quite overtops the
+militant interest in overcoming it.</p>
+
+<p>Carlyle, on the other hand, saw the immense evil of the social conditions
+in England, and raged and stormed against them, but could see no light by
+which evil could be turned into good. He little realized that his own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+storming at the ineptitude, the imbecility, the fool-ness of society, and
+his own despair over the, to him, unaccountable evils of existence, were
+in themselves a positive good growing out of the evil. Though he was not
+to suggest practical means for leading the masses out of bondage, he was
+to call attention in trumpet tones to the fact that the bondage existed.
+By so doing he was taking a first step or rather drawing aside the curtain
+and revealing the dire necessity that steps should be taken and taken
+soon. While Carlyle was militantly shouting against evil to some purpose
+which would later mean militant action against it, Browning was settling
+in his own mind just what relation evil should hold to good in the scheme
+of the universe, and writing a poem to tell why he was a liberal. In fine,
+Carlyle was opening the way toward the socialism of the latter part of the
+century, while Browning was still found in the camp of what the socialist
+of to-day calls the middle-class individualist.</p>
+
+<p>Liberalism, which had taken on social conditions to the point through
+legislation where every man was free to be a property holder if he could
+manage to become one, and to amass wealth, left out of consideration the
+fact that he never could be free as long as he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> had to compete with
+every other man in the state to get these things. Hence the movement of
+the working classes to gain freedom by substituting for a competitive form
+of society a co&ouml;perative form. Great names in literature and art have
+helped toward the on-coming of this movement. Carlyle had railed at the
+millions of the English nation, &#8220;mostly fools;&#8221; Ruskin had bemoaned the
+enthronement of ugliness as the result of the industrial conditions;
+Matthew Arnold had proposed a panacea for the ills of the social condition
+in the bringing about of social equality through culture, and, best of
+all, William Morris had not only talked but acted.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img08.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">William Morris</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>To any student of social movements to-day, whether he has been drawn into
+the swirl of socialistic propaganda or whether he is still comfortably
+sitting in his parlor feeling an intellectual sympathy but no emotional
+call to leave his parlor and be up and doing, Morris appears as the most
+interesting figure of the century. The pioneers in the nineteenth-century
+movement toward socialism in England, unless we except the social
+enthusiasm of a Shelley or a Blake, were Owen and Maurice. Owen was that
+remarkable anomaly, a self-made man who had gained his wealth because of
+the new industrial order inaugurated by the invention<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> of machinery, who
+yet could look at the circumstances so fortuitous for him in an impersonal
+manner, and realize that what had put a silver spoon into his own mouth
+was taking away even pewter spoons from other men&#8217;s mouths. Although he
+was really in love with the new order of machine production, he realized
+what many to-day fail to see, that machine production organized for the
+benefit of private persons would most assuredly mean the poverty and the
+degradation of the workers. He did not stop here, however, but spent his
+vast fortune in trying to make the conditions of the workingmen better. In
+the estimation of socialists to-day his work was of a very high order,
+&#8220;not mere utopianism.&#8221; It bore no similarity to the romantic dreams of
+poets who saw visions of a perfect society regardless of the fact that a
+perfect society cannot suddenly blossom from conditions of appalling
+misery and degradation. Owen was a practical business man. He knew all the
+ins and outs of the industrial r&eacute;gime, and consequently he had a practical
+program, not a dream, which he wished to see carried out. Accounts of the
+conditions of the workers at that time are heartrending. Everywhere the
+same tale of abject poverty, ignorance, and oppression in field and
+factory,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> long hours of labor and dear food. To bring help to these
+downtrodden people was the burning desire of Robert Owen and his
+followers. His efforts were not rewarded by that success which they
+deserved, his failure being a necessary concomitant of the fact that even
+a practical program for betterment cannot suddenly take effect owing to
+the inevitable inertia of any long-established conditions. In showing the
+causes which kept him from the full accomplishment of his ideals, in spite
+of his genuine practicalness, Brougham Villiers, the recent historian of
+the socialist movement in England, says he attempted too much &#8220;to
+influence the workers from without, trying, of course vainly, to induce
+the governing classes to interest themselves in the work of social reform.
+Yet it is difficult to see what else he could have done at the time. We
+have already shown how utterly disorganized the working classes were, how
+incapable, indeed, of any organization. They were also destitute of
+political power, and miserably underpaid. What could they do to help
+themselves? Help, if it was to come at all, must come from the only people
+who then had the power, if they only had the will, to accord it, and to
+them, at first, Robert Owen appealed. Later, he turned to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> the people,
+and for them indeed his work was not utterly wasted, though generations
+were to pass before the full effect of it could be seen.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>However abortive his attempts to gain political sympathy for his socialist
+program, and in spite of the fact that socialist agitation came to a
+standstill in England with the defeat of the somewhat chaotic socialism of
+the Chartists, it cannot be doubted that his efforts influenced the
+political reformers who were to take up one injustice after another and
+fight for its melioration until the working classes were at least brought
+to a plane where they could begin to organize and develop toward the still
+higher plane where they could themselves take their own salvation in hand.</p>
+
+<p>Another man who did much to bring the workingman&#8217;s cause into prominence
+was Maurice, who emphasized the Christian aspect of the movement. He was
+an excellent supplement to Owen, whose liberal views on religion militated
+in some quarters against an acceptance of his humane views in regard to
+workingmen.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding the personal strength of these two men they failed not
+only in the practical attainment of their object, but their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> ideas on
+socialism did not even wedge itself into the thought consciousness of the
+Englishmen.</p>
+
+<p>The men who did more than any one else to awaken the sleeping English
+consciousness were Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold and Morris. Of these Morris
+held a position midway between the old-fashioned dreamer of dreams and the
+new-fashioned hustling political socialist, who now sends his
+representatives to Parliament and has his &#8220;say&#8221; in the national affairs of
+the country.</p>
+
+<p>Being a poet, he could, of course, dream dreams, and one of these, &#8220;The
+Dream of John Ball,&#8221; puts the case of the toilers in a form at once so
+convincing and so full of divine pity that it does not seem possible it
+could be read even by the most hardened of trust magnates without making
+him see how unjust has been the distribution of this world&#8217;s goods through
+the making of one man do the work of many: &#8220;In days to come one man shall
+do the work of a hundred men&mdash;yea, of a thousand or more: and this is the
+shift of mastership that shall make many masters and many rich men.&#8221; This
+is a riddle which John Ball cannot grasp at once, and when it is explained
+to him he is still more mystified at the result.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thou hast seen the weaver at his loom:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> think how it should be if he sit
+no longer before the web and cast the shuttle and draw home the sley, but
+if the shed open of itself, speed through it as swift as the eye can
+follow, and the sley come home of itself, and the weaver standing by ...
+looking to half a dozen looms and bidding them what to do. And as with the
+weaver so with the potter, and the smith, and every worker in metals, and
+all other crafts, that it shall be for them looking on and tending, as
+with the man that sitteth in the cart while the horse draws. Yea, at last
+so shall it be even with those who are mere husbandmen; and no longer
+shall the reaper fare afield in the morning with his hook over his
+shoulder, and smite and bind and smite again till the sun is down and the
+moon is up; but he shall draw a thing made by men into the field with one
+or two horses, and shall say the word and the horses shall go up and down,
+and the thing shall reap and gather and bind, and do the work of many men.
+Imagine all this in thy mind if thou canst, at least as ye may imagine a
+tale of enchantment told by a minstrel, and then tell me what shouldst
+thou deem that the life of men would be amidst all this, men such as these
+of the township here, or the men of the Canterbury guilds.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>And John Ball&#8217;s conclusion is that things in that day to come will be not
+as they are but as they ought to be. With irresistible logic he declares:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I say that if men still abide men as I have known them, and unless these
+folk of England change as the land changeth&mdash;and forsooth of the men, for
+good and for evil, I can think no other than I think now, or behold them
+other than I have known them and loved them&mdash;I say if the men be still
+men, what will happen except that there should be all plenty in the land,
+and not one poor man therein ... for there would then be such abundance of
+good things, that, as greedy as the lords might be, there would be enough
+to satisfy their greed and yet leave good living for all who labored with
+their hands; so that these should labor for less than now, and they would
+have time to learn knowledge,&#8221; and he goes on, &#8220;take part in the making of
+laws.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Morris was not the man to dream, merely. Though he did not trouble
+himself about the doctrinaire side of socialism, he preached it constantly
+from the human side and from the artistic side. While some socialist
+writers make us feel that socialism might possibly only be Gradgrind in
+another guise, he makes us feel that peace and plenty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> and loveliness
+would attend upon the sons and daughters of socialism. As one of his many
+admirers says of him: &#8220;He was an out-and-out Communist because of the
+essential sanity of a mind incapable of the desire to monopolize anything
+he could not use.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The authoritarianism of the Marxian socialists was distasteful to him,
+for, to quote from the same admirer, his &#8220;conception of socialism was that
+of a free society, based on the simple rights of all to use the earth and
+anything in it, and the consequent abolition of all competition for the
+means of life.&#8221; His attitude of mind on these points led him to break away
+from the Social Democratic Federation, which, with its political program,
+was distasteful to Morris&#8217;s more purely social feeling, and found the
+Socialist League. This emphasized more particularly the artistic side of
+socialism. Morris and his followers were bent upon making life a beautiful
+thing as well as a comfortable thing.</p>
+
+<p>According to all accounts, the League was not as great a force in the
+development of socialist ideals as was Morris himself, who inspired such
+men as Burne-Jones and Walter Crane with a sympathy in the new ideals, as
+well as multitudes of lesser men in the crowds that gathered to listen to
+him in Waltham<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> Green or in some other like open place of a Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>Morris&#8217;s chief contribution to the growth of the cause was perhaps his own
+business plant, into which he put as many of his ideals for the betterment
+of the workingmen&#8217;s conditions as he was able to do under existing
+conditions. Who has not gloated over his exquisite editions of Chaucer and
+the like&mdash;books in which even the punctuation marks are a delight to the
+eye, and the illustrations as far beyond ordinary illustrations as the
+punctuation marks are beyond ordinary periods. If anything could add to
+the richness of the interior it is the contrasting simplicity of the white
+vellum bindings, and, again, if there is another possible touch of
+grace&mdash;a gilding of the lily&mdash;what could better fulfil that purpose than
+the outer boxing covered with a Morris cotton print! The critical may
+object that these Morris editions are so expensive that none but
+millionaire bibliophiles can have many of them. How many of us have even
+seen them except in such collections! And how many of his workmen are able
+to share in this product of their labor to any greater extent than the
+product of labor is usually shared in by its producers, may be asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>Though we are obliged to answer that the workmen probably do not have the
+Morris books in their own libraries, they yet have the joy of making these
+beautiful books under conditions of happy workmanship&mdash;that is, they are
+skilled craftsmen, who have been trained in an apprenticeship, who are
+asked to work only eight hours a day, who receive higher wages than other
+workmen and, above all, who have the stimulation of the presence of
+Morris, himself, working among them.</p>
+
+<p>Morris&#8217;s enthusiasm for a more universally happy and beautiful society
+combined with the object lesson of his own methods in conducting a
+business upon genuinely artistic principles has done an incalculable
+amount in spreading the gospel of socialism. Still there was too much of
+the <i>laissez faire</i> atmosphere about his attitude for it to bring about
+any marked degree of progress.</p>
+
+<p>The opinion of Mr. William Clarke who had many conversations with Morris
+on the subject reveals that, after all, there was too much of the poet
+about him for him to be a really practical force in the movement. He
+writes:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is not easy to understand how Morris proposes to bring about the
+condition of things<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> he looks forward to. No parliamentary or municipal
+methods, no reliance upon lawmaking machinery, an abhorrence of everything
+that smacks of &#8216;politics&#8217;: it all seems very impracticable to the average
+man, and certainly suggests the poet rather than the man of affairs. What
+Morris thinks will really happen is, I should say, judging from numerous
+conversations I have had with him, something like this: Existing society
+is, he thinks, gradually, but with increasing momentum, disintegrating
+through its own rottenness. The capitalist system of production is
+breaking down fast and is compelled to exploit new regions in Africa and
+other parts, where he thinks its term will be short. Economically,
+socially, morally, politically, religiously, civilization is becoming
+bankrupt. Meanwhile it is for the socialist to take advantage of this
+disintegration by spreading discontent, by preaching economic truths, and
+by any kind of demonstration which may harass the authorities and develop
+among the people an <i>esprit de corps</i>. By these means the people will, in
+some way or other, be ready to take up the industry of the world when the
+capitalist class is no longer able to direct or control it. Morris
+believes less in a violent revolution than he did and thinks that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>workmen&#8217;s associations and labor unions form a kind of means between
+brute force on the one hand and a parliamentary policy on the other. He
+does not, however, share the sanguine views of John Burns as to the
+wonders to be accomplished by the &#8216;new&#8217; trades unionism.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The practical ineffectiveness of the Morris socialism in spite of its
+having taken some steps in the direction of vital activity was overcome by
+the next socialist body which came into prominence&mdash;the Fabian Society, in
+which Bernard Shaw has been so conspicuous a figure.</p>
+
+<p>As already mentioned, the Fabians are not a fighting body, but a solidly
+educational body. To them is due the bringing of socialism into the realm
+of political economy, and in so doing they have striven to harmonize it
+with English practical political methods. Besides this, they have done a
+vast amount of work in educating public opinion, not with the view to
+immediately converting the English nation to a belief in the changing of
+the present order into one wholly socialistic, but with a view to
+introducing socialistic treatment of the individual problems which arise
+in contemporary politics.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img09.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">John Burns</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Their campaign of education was conducted so well that its effects were
+soon visible, not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> only in the modification of public opinion, but upon
+the workingmen themselves. The method was simple enough: &#8220;If any public,
+especially any social, question came to the front, the Fabian method was
+to make a careful independent study of the matter, and present to the
+public, in a penny pamphlet, a thoughtful statement of the case and some
+common sense, and incidentally socialistic, suggestions for a solution.&#8221;
+Fabian ideas were thus introduced into the consciousness of the awakening
+trades unionists.</p>
+
+<p>It has been objected that the gain was much more for the trades unionists
+than for the Fabians. Their one-time eager pupils have, it is said,
+progressed beyond their masters, as a review of recent socialistic
+tendencies would divulge had we the time to follow them in this place.
+However that may be, the great fact remains that the Fabians have done
+more than any other branch of socialists to bridge over the distance
+between what the English writers call the middle-class idealist and the
+proletarian, with the result that the proletarian has begun to think for
+himself and to translate middle-class idealism into proletarian realism.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism, from being the watch word of the enthusiastic revolutionary,
+began to be <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>discussed in every intelligent household and in every
+debating society. This enormous growth in public sentiment occurred during
+the session of the Unionist Parliament, 1886-92. When this Parliament
+opened there was hardly any socialist literature, and when it closed
+everybody was reading Bellamy and the &#8220;Fabian Essays,&#8221; and Sir William
+Harcourt had made his memorable remark: &#8220;We are all socialists now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The gesticulating and bemoaning idealists, the Carlyles and the Ruskins,
+the revolutionary but <i>laissez faire</i> prophets like Morris, who believed
+in a complete change but not in using any of the means at hand to bring
+about that change, had given place to men like Keir Hardie and John Burns,
+who had sprung into leadership from the ranks of the workingmen
+themselves, and who were to be later their representatives in Parliament
+when the Independent Labor Party came into existence. All this had been
+done by that group of progressive men, long-headed enough to see that the
+ideal of a better and more beautiful social life could not be gained
+except by a long and toilsome process of education and of action which
+would consciously follow the principles of growth discovered by scientists
+to obtain in all unconscious cosmic and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> physical development, the very
+principle which as we have seen, Browning declared should have guided his
+hero Sordello long before the Fabian socialists came into
+existence&mdash;namely, the principle of evolution. That their methods should
+have peacefully brought about the conditions where it was possible to form
+an Independent Labor Party, which would have the power to speak and act
+for itself instead of working as the Fabians themselves do through the
+parties already in power, shouts aloud for the wisdom of their policy. And
+is there not still plenty of work for them to do in the still further
+educating of all parties toward the flowering of genuine democracy, when
+the dreams of the dreamer shall have become actualities, because true and
+not spurious ways of making them actual shall have been worked out by
+experience?</p>
+
+<p>This remarkable growth in social ideals was taking place during the ninth
+decade of the century and the last decade of Browning&#8217;s life. Is there any
+indication in his later work that he was conscious of it? There is
+certainly no direct evidence in his work that he progressed any farther in
+the development of democratic ideals than we find in the liberalism of
+such a parliamentary leader as Mr. Gladstone, while in that poem in which
+he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> considers more especially than in any other the subject of better
+conditions for the people, &#8220;Sordello,&#8221; he distinctly expresses a mood of
+doubt as to the advisability of making conditions too easy for the human
+being, who needs the hardships and ills of life to bring his soul to
+perfection, a far more important thing in Browning&#8217;s eyes than to live
+comfortably and beautifully. All he wishes for the human being is the fine
+chance to make the most of himself spiritually. The socialist would say
+that he could not secure the chance to do this except in a society where
+the murderous principle of competition should give way to that of
+co&ouml;peration. With this Browning might agree. Indeed, may this not have
+been the very principle Sordello had in mind as something revealed to him
+which neither Guelf nor Ghibelline could see, or was this only the more
+obvious principle of republican as opposed to monarchical principle and
+still falling under an individualistic conception of society?</p>
+
+<p>While his work is instinct with sympathy for all classes and conditions of
+men, Browning does not feel the ills of life with the intensity of a
+Carlyle, nor its ugliness with the grief of a Ruskin, nor yet its lack of
+culture with the priggishness of an Arnold, nor would he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> stand in open
+spaces and preach discontent to the masses like Morris. Why? Because he
+from the first was made wise to see a good in evil, a hope in ill-success,
+to be proud of men&#8217;s fallacies, their half reasons, their faint aspirings,
+upward tending all though weak, the lesson learned after weary experiences
+of life by Paracelsus. His thought was centered upon the worth of every
+human being to himself and for God. Earth is after all only a place to
+grow in and prepare one&#8217;s self for lives to come, and failure here, so
+long as the fight has been bravely fought, is to be regarded with anything
+but regret, for it is through the failure that the vision of the future is
+made more sure.</p>
+
+<p>What he finds true, as we saw, in the religious or philosophical world, he
+finds true in the moral world. Lack in human knowledge points the way to
+God; lack in human success points the way to immortality.</p>
+
+<p>The meaning of this life in relation to a future life being so much more
+important than this life in itself, and man&#8217;s individual development being
+so much more important than his social development, Browning naturally
+would not turn his attention upon those practical, social or governmental
+means by which even the chance for individual development must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> be
+secured. He is too much occupied with the larger questions. He is not even
+a middle-class idealist, dreaming dreams of future earthly bliss; he is
+the prophet of future existences.</p>
+
+<p>Does his practical influence upon the social development of the century
+amount to nothing then? Not at all. He started out on his voyage through
+the century toward the democratic ideal in the good ship
+Individualism&mdash;the banner ship indeed. What he has emphasized upon this
+voyage is first the paramount worth of each and every human being, whether
+good or bad. Second, the possibility in every human being of conceiving an
+ideal, toward which by the exertion of his will power he should aspire,
+battling steadfastly against every obstruction that life throws in his
+course. Third, that even those who are incapable of formulating an ideal
+must be regarded as living out the truth of their natures and must
+therefore be treated with compassion. Fourth, that the highest function of
+the human soul is love, which expresses itself in many ways, but attains
+its full flowering only in the love of man and woman on a plane of
+spiritual exaltation, and that through this power of human love some
+glimpse of the divine is caught; therefore to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> this function of the soul
+it is of the utmost importance that human beings should be loyal and true,
+even if that loyalty and truth conflict with conventional ways of looking
+at life. Sailing in this good ship he also expresses his sympathy
+indirectly in his dramas and directly upon several occasions with the
+ideals of political freedom which during the century have been making
+progress toward democracy in the English Parliament through the
+legislation of the liberals, whose laws have brought a greater and greater
+measure of freedom to the middle classes and some measure of freedom to
+the working classes.</p>
+
+<p>But it seems as if when nearing the end of the century Browning landed
+from his ship upon some high island and straining his eyes toward the
+horizon of the dawn of another life did not fully realize that there was
+another good ship, Socialism, struggling to reach the ideal of democracy,
+and now become the banner ship whose work is to sail out into the unknown,
+turbulent seas of the future, finding the path to another high island in
+order that the way may be made clear for the ship Individualism to
+continue her course to another stage in the voyage toward a perfect
+democracy. And as the new ship, Socialism, passes on its way it will do
+well to heed the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> vision of the poet seer, straining his eyes toward the
+dawn of other lives in other spheres, lest in the struggle and strain to
+bring about a more comfortable and beautiful life upon earth, the
+important truth be slighted that humanity has a higher destiny to fulfil
+than can be realized in the most Utopian dreams of an earthly democracy.
+This truth is in fact not only forgotten but is absolutely denied by many
+of the latter-day social reformers.</p>
+
+<p>To sum up, I think one is justified in concluding that as a sympathizer
+with the liberal political tendencies of the nineteenth century Browning
+is of his age. In his quiescence upon the proletarian movement of the
+latter part of the nineteenth century he seems to have been left behind by
+his age. In his insistence upon the worth of the individual to himself and
+to God he is both of his age and beyond it. As has been said of
+philosophy, &#8220;It cannot give us bread but it can give us God, soul and
+immortality,&#8221; so we may say of Browning, that though he did not raise up
+his voice in the cry of the proletarian for bread, he has insisted upon
+the truths of God, the soul and immortality.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+<p class="title">ART SHIBBOLETHS</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">In the</span> foregoing chapters the relations of the poet to the philosophical,
+religious, political, and social movements of the nineteenth century have
+been pointed out. In this and the next chapter some account of his
+relation to the artistic and literary ideals of the century will be
+attempted.</p>
+
+<p>Browning&#8217;s relation to the art of the century is, of course, twofold,
+dealing as it must with his own conceptions and criticisms of art as well
+as with the position of his own art in the poetic development of the
+century.</p>
+
+<p>In order to understand more fully his own contribution to the developing
+literary standards of the century it may be well first to consider the
+fundamental principles of art laid down by him in various poems wherein he
+has deliberately dealt with the subject.</p>
+
+<p>The poem in which he has most clearly formulated the general principles
+underlying the growth of art is the &#8220;Parleying&#8221; with Charles Avison.
+Though music is the special<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> art under consideration, the rules of growth
+obtaining in that are equally applicable to other arts. They are found to
+be, as we should expect in Browning, a combination of the ideas of
+evolution and conservation. Though the standards of art change and
+develop, because as man&#8217;s soul evolves, more complex forms are needed to
+express his deeper experiences, his wider vision, yet in each stage of the
+development there is an element of permanent beauty which by the aid of
+the historical sense man may continue to enjoy. That element of permanence
+exists when genuine feeling and aspiration find expression in forms of
+art. The element of change grows out of the fact that both the thought
+expressed and the form in which it is expressed are partial manifestations
+of the beauty or truth toward which feeling aspires; hence the need of
+fresh attempts to reach the infinite. The permanence of feeling,
+expressing itself in ever new forms, is brought out finely in this
+passage:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 14em;">&#8220;Truths escape</span><br />
+Time&#8217;s insufficient garniture: they fade,<br />
+They fall&mdash;those sheathings now grown sere, whose aid<br />
+Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And free through march frost: May dews crystalline</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nourish truth merely,&mdash;does June boast the fruit</span><br />
+As&mdash;not new vesture merely but, to boot,<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>Novel creation? Soon shall fade and fall<br />
+Myth after myth&mdash;the husk-like lies I call<br />
+New truth&#8217;s Corolla-safeguard.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In another passage is shown how the permanence of feeling conserves even
+the form, if we will bring ourselves into touch with it:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 11em;">&#8220;Never dream</span><br />
+That what once lived shall ever die! They seem<br />
+Dead&mdash;do they? lapsed things lost in limbo? Bring<br />
+Our life to kindle theirs, and straight each king<br />
+Starts, you shall see, stands up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This kindling of an old form with our own life is more difficult in the
+case of music than it is in painting or poetry, for in these we have a
+concrete form to deal with&mdash;a form which reflects the thought with much
+more definiteness than music is able to do. The strength and weakness, at
+once, of music is that it gives expression to subtler regions of thought
+and feeling than the other arts, at the same time that the form is more
+evanescent, because fashioned out of elements infinitely less related to
+nature than those of other art forms. In his poems on music, the poet
+always emphasizes these aspects of music. Its supremacy as a means of
+giving expression to the subtlest regions of feeling is dwelt upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> in
+&#8220;Abt Vogler&#8221; and &#8220;Fifine at the Fair.&#8221; The Abb&eacute;, from the standpoint of
+the creator of music, feels so strongly from the inside its power for
+expressing infinite aspiration that in his ecstasy he exclaims: &#8220;The rest
+may reason and welcome. &#8217;Tis we musicians know.&#8221; Upon the evanescence of
+the form peculiar emphasis is also laid in this poem, through the fact
+that the music is improvised. Yet even this fact does not mean the entire
+annihilation of the form. In the tenth stanza of the poem the idea of the
+permanence of the art form as well as of the feeling is expanded into a
+symbol of the immortality of all good:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power</span><br />
+Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When eternity confirms the conception of an hour,</span><br />
+The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,</span><br />
+Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>The sophistical arguer in &#8220;Fifine&#8221; feels this same power of music to
+express thoughts not to be made palpable in any other manner.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">&#8220;Words struggle with the weight</span><br />
+So feebly of the False, thick element between<br />
+Our soul, the True, and Truth! which, but that intervene<br />
+False shows of things, were reached as easily by thought<br />
+Reducible to word, and now by yearnings wrought<br />
+Up with thy fine free force, oh Music, that canst thrill,<br />
+Electrically win a passage through the lid<br />
+Of earthly sepulchre, our words may push against,<br />
+Hardly transpierce as thou.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And again, in another passage, he gives to music the power of conserving a
+mood of feeling, which in this case is not an exalted one, since it is one
+that chimes in with his own rather questionable feeling for Fifine, the
+fiz-gig. It is found in Schumann&#8217;s &#8220;Carnival&#8221;:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Thought hankers after speech, while no speech may evince<br />
+Feeling like music,&mdash;mine, o&#8217;er-burthened with each gift<br />
+From every visitant, at last resolved to shift<br />
+Its burthen to the back of some musician dead<br />
+And gone, who feeling once what I feel now, instead<br />
+Of words, sought sounds, and saved forever, in the same,<br />
+Truth that escapes prose,&mdash;nay, puts poetry to shame.<br />
+I read the note, I strike the Key, I bid <i>record</i><br />
+The instrument&mdash;thanks greet the veritable word!<br />
+And not in vain I urge: &#8216;O dead and gone away,<br />
+Assist who struggles yet, thy strength becomes my stay,<br />
+Thy record serve as well to register&mdash;I felt<br />
+And knew thus much of truth! With me, must knowledge melt<br />
+Into surmise and doubt and disbelief unless<br />
+Thy music reassure&mdash;I gave no idle guess,<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>But gained a certitude I yet may hardly keep!<br />
+What care? since round is piled a monumental heap<br />
+Of music that conserves the assurance, thou as well<br />
+Was certain of the same! thou, master of the spell,<br />
+Mad&#8217;st moonbeams marble, didst <i>record</i> what other men<br />
+Feel only to forget!&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The man in the case is merely an appreciator, not a creator, yet he
+experiences with equal force music&#8217;s power as a recorder of feeling. He
+notes also that the feeling must appear from time to time in a new dress,</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">&#8220;the stuff that&#8217;s made</span><br />
+To furnish man with thought and feeling is purveyed<br />
+Substantially the same from age to age, with change<br />
+Of the outside only for successive feasters.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In this case, the old tunes have actually been worked over by the more
+modern composer whose form has not yet sufficiently gone by to fail of an
+immediate appeal to this person with feelings kindled by similar
+experiences. What the speaker in the poem perceives is not merely the fact
+of the feelings experienced but the power of the music to take him off
+upon a long train of more or less philosophical reasoning born of that
+very element of change. In this power of suggestiveness lies music&#8217;s
+greater range of spiritual force even when the feeling expressed is not of
+the deepest.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>If we look at his poems on painting, the same principles of art are
+insisted upon except that more emphasis is laid upon the positive value of
+the incompleteness of the form. In so far as painting or sculpture reaches
+a perfect unity of thought and form it loses its power of suggesting an
+infinite beauty beyond any that our earth-born race may express.</p>
+
+<p>This in Browning&#8217;s opinion is the limitation of Greek art. It touches
+perfection or completion in expression and in so doing limits its range to
+the brief passion of a day. The effect of such art is to arouse a sort of
+despair, for it so far transcends merely human beauty that there seems
+nothing left to accomplish:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;So, testing your weakness by their strength,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty</span><br />
+Measured by Art in your breadth and length,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">You learned&mdash;to submit is a mortal&#8217;s duty.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>When such a deadlock as this is reached through the stultifying effect of
+an art expression which seems to have embodied all there is of passion and
+physical beauty, the one way out is to turn away from the abject
+contemplation of such art and go back again to humanity itself, in whose
+widening nature may be discovered the promise of an eternity of
+progression. Therefore, &#8220;To cries of Greek<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> art and what more wish you?&#8221;
+the poet would have it that the early painters replied:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">&#8220;To become now self-acquainters,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And paint man, whatever the issue!</span><br />
+Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters:</span><br />
+To bring the invisible full into play!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Let the visible go to the dogs&mdash;what matters?&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>The revolution in art started by these early worthies had more of
+spiritual promise in it than the past perfection&mdash;&#8220;The first of the new,
+in our race&#8217;s story, beats the last of the old.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His emphasis here upon the return to humanity in order to gain a new
+source of inspiration in art is further illustrated in his attitude toward
+the two painters which he portrays so splendidly: Fra Lippo Lippi, the
+realist, whose Madonnas looked like real women, and who has scandalized
+some critics on this account, and Andrea del Sarto, the faultless painter,
+who exclaims in despair as he gazes upon a picture by Raphael, in which he
+sees a fault to pardon in the drawing&#8217;s line, an error that he could alter
+for the better, &#8220;But all the play, the insight and the stretch,&#8221; beyond
+him.</p>
+
+<p>The importance of basing art upon the study<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> of the human body is later
+insisted upon in Francis Furini, not as an end in itself, but as the
+dwelling place of the soul. &#8220;Let my pictures prove I know,&#8221; says Furini,</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Somewhat of what this fleshly frame of ours<br />
+Or is or should be, how the soul empowers<br />
+The body to reveal its every mood<br />
+Of love and hate, pour forth its plenitude<br />
+Of passion.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The evolutionary ideal appears again in his utterances upon poetry, though
+when speaking of poetry it is the value of the subject matter and its
+intimate relation to the form upon which he dwells.</p>
+
+<p>The little poem &#8220;Popularity&#8221; shows as clearly as any the importance which
+he attaches to a new departure in poetic expression, besides giving vent
+to his scorn of the multitude which sees nothing in the work of the
+innovator but which is ready at a later date to laud his imitators. Any
+minor poet, for that matter, any Nokes or Stokes who merely prints blue
+according to the poetic conventions of the past, possessing not a
+suspicion of the true inspiration which goes to the making of a poet of
+the new order, is more acceptable to an unseeing public than him with
+power to fish &#8220;the murex up&#8221; that contains the precious drop of royal
+blue.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>More than one significant hint may be gleaned from his verse in regard to
+his opinion upon the formal side of the poet&#8217;s art. In &#8220;Transcendentalism&#8221;
+he has his fling at the didactic poet who pleases to speak naked thoughts
+instead of draping them in sights and sounds, for &#8220;song&#8221; is the art of the
+poet. Some stout mage like him of Halberstadt has his admiration, who with
+a</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">&#8220;&#8216;Look you!&#8217; vents a brace of rhymes,</span><br />
+And in there breaks the sudden rose herself,<br />
+Over us, under, round us every side,<br />
+Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs<br />
+And musty volumes, Boehme&#8217;s book and all,&mdash;<br />
+Buries us with a glory young once more,<br />
+Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He was equally averse to an ornate classical embellishment of a latter day
+subject or to a looking at nature through mythop&oelig;ic Greek eyes. This is
+driven home in the splendid fooling in &#8220;Gerard de Lairesse&#8221; where the poet
+himself indulges by way of a joke in some high-flown classical imagery in
+derision of the style of Lairesse and hints covertly probably at the
+nineteenth-century masters of classical resuscitation, in subject matter
+and allusion, Swinburne and Morris. Reacting to soberer mood, he
+reiterates his belief in the utter deadness of Greek ideals of art,
+speaking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> with a strength of conviction so profound as to make one feel
+that here at least Browning suffered from a decided limitation, all the
+more strange, too, when one considers his own masterly treatment of Greek
+subjects. To the poets whose poetic creed is</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">&#8220;Dream afresh old godlike shapes,</span><br />
+Recapture ancient fable that escapes,<br />
+Push back reality, repeople earth<br />
+With vanished falseness, recognize no worth<br />
+In fact new-born unless &#8217;tis rendered back<br />
+Pallid by fancy, as the western rack<br />
+Of fading cloud bequeaths the lake some gleam<br />
+Of its gone glory!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>he would reply,</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">&#8220;Let things be&mdash;not seem,</span><br />
+I counsel rather,&mdash;do, and nowise dream!<br />
+Earth&#8217;s young significance is all to learn;<br />
+The dead Greek lore lies buried in the urn<br />
+Where who seeks fire finds ashes. Ghost, forsooth!<br />
+What was the best Greece babbled of as truth?<br />
+A shade, a wretched nothing,&mdash;sad, thin, drear,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><strong><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></strong></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 14em;">Sad school</span><br />
+Was Hades! Gladly,&mdash;might the dead but slink<br />
+To life back,&mdash;to the dregs once more would drink<br />
+Each interloper, drain the humblest cup<br />
+Fate mixes for humanity.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>The rush onward to the supreme is uppermost in the poet&#8217;s mind in this
+poem. Though he does indulge in the refrain that there shall never be one
+lost good echoing the thought in &#8220;Charles Avison,&#8221; the climax of his mood
+is in the contemplation of the evolutionary force of the soul which must
+leave Greek art behind and find new avenues of beauty:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 12em;">&#8220;The Past indeed</span><br />
+Is past, gives way before Life&#8217;s best and last<br />
+The all-including Future! What were life<br />
+Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife<br />
+Through the ambiguous Present to the goal<br />
+Of some all-reconciling Future? Soul,<br />
+Nothing has been which shall not bettered be<br />
+Hereafter,&mdash;leave the root, by law&#8217;s decree<br />
+Whence springs the ultimate and perfect tree!<br />
+Busy thee with unearthing root? Nay, climb&mdash;<br />
+Quit trunk, branch, leaf and flower&mdash;reach, rest sublime<br />
+Where fruitage ripens in the blaze of day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When it comes to the subject matter of poetry, Browning constantly insists
+that it should be the study of the human soul. A definite statement as to
+the range of subjects under this general material of poetry is put forth
+very early in his poetical career in &#8220;Paracelsus&#8221; and it is all-inclusive.
+It is the passage where Aprile describes how universal he wished to make
+his sympathy as a poet.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> No one is to be left out of his all-embracing
+democracy.</p>
+
+<p>Such, then, are his general principles in regard to poetic development and
+subject matter. These do not touch upon the question so often discussed of
+the relative value of the subjective as against the objective poet. This
+point the poet considers in &#8220;Sordello,&#8221; where he throws in his weight on
+the side of the objective poet. In the passage in the third book the poet,
+speaking in person, gives illustrations of three sorts of poetic
+composition: the dramatic, the descriptive and the meditative; the first
+belongs to the objective, the second, not distinctively to either, and the
+third to the subjective manner of writing. The dramatic method is the most
+forceful, for it imparts the gift of seeing to others, while the
+descriptive and meditative merely tell what they saw, or, worse still,
+talk about it.</p>
+
+<p>Further indications of his allegiance to the dramatic form of poetry as
+the supreme one are found in his poems inspired by Shakespeare, &#8220;House&#8221;
+and &#8220;Shop,&#8221; but we must turn to a pregnant bit of his prose in order to
+find his exact feeling upon the relations of the subjective and objective
+poet, together with a clear conception of what he meant by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> a dramatic
+poet, which was something more than Shakespeare&#8217;s &#8220;holding the mirror up
+to nature.&#8221; In his view the dramatic poet must have the vision of the seer
+as well as the penetration of a psychologist. He must hold the mirror up
+not only to nature, regarded as phenomena, but to the human soul, and he
+must perceive the relation of that human soul to the universal. He must in
+fact plunge beneath the surface of actions and events and bring forth to
+the light the psychic and cosmic causes of these things. The passage
+referred to in the &#8220;Introduction to the Shelley Letters&#8221; points out how in
+the evolution of poetry there will be the play and interplay of the
+subjective and the objective faculties upon each other, with the probable
+result of the arising of poets who will combine the two sorts of faculty.
+While Browning&#8217;s own sympathy with the dramatic poet is as fully evident
+here as in the passage in &#8220;Sordello,&#8221; he realizes, as perhaps he did not
+at that time, when he was himself breaking away from Shelley&#8217;s influence,
+the value of the subjective method in carrying on the process of poetic
+evolution:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;It would be idle to inquire, of these two kinds of poetic faculty in
+operation, which is the higher or even rarer endowment. If the
+subjective might seem to be the ultimate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> requirement of every age,
+the objective, in the strictest state, must still retain its original
+value. For it is with this word, as starting-point and basis alike,
+that we shall always have to concern ourselves: the world is not to be
+learned and thrown aside, but reverted to and relearned. The spiritual
+comprehension may be infinitely subtilized, but the raw material it
+operates upon must remain. There may be no end of the poets who
+communicate to us what they see in an object with reference to their
+own individuality; what it was before they saw it, in reference to the
+aggregate human mind, will be as desirable to know as ever. Nor is
+there any reason why these two modes of poetic faculty may not issue
+hereafter from the same poet in successive perfect works, examples of
+which, according to what are now considered the exigencies of art, we
+have hitherto possessed in distinct individuals only. A mere running
+in of the one faculty upon the other is, of course, the ordinary
+circumstance. Far more rarely it happens that either is found so
+decidedly prominent and superior as to be pronounced comparatively
+pure: while of the perfect shield, with the gold and the silver side
+set up for all comers to challenge, there has yet been no instance. A
+tribe of successors (Homerides), working more or less in the same
+spirit, dwell on his discoveries and reinforce his doctrine; till, at
+unawares, the world is found to be subsisting wholly on the shadow of
+a reality, on sentiments diluted from passions, on the tradition of a
+fact, the convention of a moral, the straw of last year&#8217;s harvest.
+Then is the imperative call for the appearance of another sort of
+poet, who shall at once replace this intellectual rumination of food
+swallowed long ago, by a supply of the fresh and living swathe;
+getting at new substance by breaking up the assumed wholes into parts
+of independent and unclassed value, careless of the unknown laws for
+recombining them (it will be the business of yet another poet to
+suggest those hereafter), prodigal of objects for men&#8217;s outer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> and not
+inner sight; shaping for their uses a new and different creation from
+the last, which it displaces by the right of life over death,&mdash;to
+endure until, in the inevitable process, its very sufficiency to
+itself shall require, at length, an exposition of its affinity to
+something higher&mdash;when the positive yet conflicting facts shall again
+precipitate themselves under a harmonizing law, and one more degree
+will be apparent for a poet to climb in that mighty ladder, of which,
+however cloud-involved and undefined may glimmer the topmost step, the
+world dares no longer doubt that its gradations ascend.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>If we measure Browning&#8217;s own work by the poetic standards which he has
+himself set up in the course of that work, it is quite evident that he has
+on the whole lived up to them. He has shown himself to be an illustration
+of the evolutionary principles in which he believes by breaking away from
+all previous standards of taste in poetry. The history of poetry in
+England has shown this to be a distinctive characteristic of all the
+greatest English poets. From Shakespeare down they have one and all run
+afoul of the critics whose special province seems to be to set up literary
+shibboleths which every genius is bent upon disregarding. When Spenser was
+inventing his stanza, verse critics were abject in their worship of
+hexameters, and their hatred of bald rhymes. Though these sticklers for
+classical forms could see clearly enough that Spenser was possessed of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+genius, they yet lamented the blindness of one, who might have written
+hexameters, perversely exclaiming &#8220;Why a God&#8217;s name may not we as else the
+Greeks have the kingdom of our own language, and measure our accents by
+the sound, reserving quantity to the verse?&#8221; When Milton appears and finds
+blank verse the medium best suited to his subject, he comes up against the
+rhyming standards of his day and is forced to submit to the indignity of
+having his &#8220;Paradise Lost&#8221; &#8220;tagged with rhymes,&#8221; as he expresses it, by
+Dryden, who graciously devoted his powers of rhyme to an improved version
+of the poem. Milton was actually obliged to defend himself in his preface
+to &#8220;Paradise Lost&#8221; for using blank verse, as Browning defends himself in
+the Epilogue to &#8220;Pacchiarotto and How We Worked in Distemper&#8221; for writing
+&#8220;strong&#8221; verse instead of the &#8220;sweet&#8221; verse the critics demand of him.</p>
+
+<p>By the time the nineteenth century dawns the critics are safely intrenched
+in the editorial den, from which, shielded by any sort of shibboleth they
+can get hold of, they may hurl forth their projectiles upon the
+unoffending head of the genius, who, with no chance of firing back in the
+open arena of the magazine, must either suffer in silence or take refuge<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+in sarcastic slurs upon his critics in his poetry, for here lies the only
+chance of getting even without waiting for the whirligig of time to bring
+the public round to a recognition of the fact that he is the one who has
+in very truth, &#8220;fished the murex up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The caliber of man who could speak of &#8220;The Ode to Immortality&#8221; as &#8220;a most
+illegible and unintelligible poem,&#8221; or who wonders that any man in his
+senses could put his name to such a rhapsody as &#8220;Endymion,&#8221; or who
+dismissed &#8220;Prometheus Unbound&#8221; with the remark that it was a <i>m&eacute;lange</i> of
+nonsense, cockneyism, poverty and pedantry, would hardly be expected to
+welcome &#8220;Sordello&#8221; with effusion. Even very intelligent people cracked
+unseemly jokes upon the appearance of &#8220;Sordello,&#8221; and what wonder, for
+Browning&#8217;s British instinct for freedom carried him in this poem to the
+most extreme lengths. In &#8220;Pauline&#8221; he had allied himself with things
+familiar to the English reader of poetry. Many of the allusions are
+classical and introduced with a rich musicalness that Shelley himself
+might have envied. The reminiscences of Shelley would also come within the
+intellectual acreage of most of the cultured people of the time. And even
+in &#8220;Paracelsus,&#8221; despite the unfamiliarity of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> subject, there was
+music and imagery such as to link the art with the admired poetic art of
+the day, but in &#8220;Sordello&#8221; all bounds are broken.</p>
+
+<p>No one but a delver in the byways of literature could, at that time, have
+been expected to know anything about Sordello; no one but a historian
+could have been expected to know about the complicated struggles of the
+Guelfs and the Ghibellines; no one but a philosopher about the tendencies,
+both political and literary, manifesting themselves in the direction of
+the awakening of democratic ideals in these pre-Dantean days; no one but a
+psychologist about the tortuous windings of Sordello&#8217;s mind.</p>
+
+<p>Only by special searching into all these regions of knowledge can one
+to-day gain a complete grasp of the situation. He must patiently tread all
+the paths that Browning trod before he can enter into sympathy with the
+poet. Then he will crack no more jokes, but he will marvel at the mind
+which could wield all this knowledge with such consummate familiarity; he
+will grow ecstatic over the splendors of the poem, and will regret its
+redundancy not of diction so much but of detail and its amazing lack of
+organic unity.</p>
+
+<p>No one but a fanatic could claim that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> &#8220;Sordello&#8221; is a success as an
+organic work of art. While the poet had a mastery of knowledge, thought
+and feeling, he did not have sufficient mastery of his own form to weld
+these together into a harmonious and convincing whole, such mastery as he,
+for example, shows in &#8220;The Ring and the Book,&#8221; though even in that there
+is some survival of the old redundancy.</p>
+
+<p>One feels when considering &#8220;Sordello&#8221; as a whole as if gazing upon a
+picture in which the perspective and the high lights and the shadows are
+not well related to each other. As great an abundance of detail is
+expended upon the less important as upon the more important fact, and
+while the details may be interesting enough in themselves, they dislodge
+more important affairs from the center of consciousness. It is, not to be
+too flippant, something like Alice&#8217;s game of croquet in &#8220;Through the
+Looking Glass.&#8221; When the hedgehog ball is nicely rolled up ready to be
+struck, the flamingo mallet walks off somewhere else.</p>
+
+<p>There, then, in &#8220;Sordello&#8221; is perhaps the most remarkable departure from
+the accepted in poetic art that an Englishman has ever attempted. In its
+elements of failure, however, it gave &#8220;a triumph&#8217;s evidence,&#8221; to use<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> the
+poet&#8217;s own phrase, &#8220;of the fulness of the days.&#8221; In this poem he had
+thrown down the gauntlet. His subject matter was not to be like that of
+any other poet, nor was his form to be like that of any other poet. He
+discarded the flowing music of &#8220;Pauline&#8221; and of &#8220;Paracelsus.&#8221; His
+allusions were no longer to be classic, but to be directly related to
+whatever subject he had in hand; his style was also to be forth-right and
+related to his subject, strong, idiomatic, rugged, even jolting if need
+be, or noble, sweeping along in large rhythms or couched in rare forms of
+symbolism, but, whatever it was to be, always different from what had
+been.</p>
+
+<p>All he required at the time when &#8220;Sordello&#8221; appeared was to find that form
+in which he could so unify his powers that his poems would gain the
+organic completeness necessary to a work of art. No matter what new
+regions an artist may push into he must discover the law of being of this
+new region. Unless he does, his art will not convince, but the moment he
+does, all that was not convincing falls into its right place. He becomes
+the master of his art, and relates the new elements in such a way that
+their rightness and their beauty, if not immediately recognized, are sure
+sooner or later to be <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>recognized by the evolving appreciator, who is the
+necessary complement, by the way, of the evolving artist. Before
+&#8220;Sordello&#8221; Browning had tried three other forms; the subjective narrative
+in &#8220;Pauline,&#8221; the dramatic poem in &#8220;Paracelsus,&#8221; a regular drama in
+&#8220;Strafford,&#8221; which however runs partly parallel with &#8220;Sordello&#8221; in
+composition. He had also done two or three short dramatic monologues.</p>
+
+<p>He evidently hoped that the regular drama would prove to be the form most
+congenial to him, for he kept on persistently in that form for nearly ten
+years, wrote much magnificent poetry in it and at times attained a
+grandeur of dramatic utterance hardly surpassed except in the master of
+all dramatists, Shakespeare. But while he has attained a very genuine
+success in this form, it is not the success of the popular acting drama.
+His dramas are to-day probably being left farther and farther aside every
+moment in the present exaggerated demands for characters in action, or
+perhaps it might be nearer the truth to say clothes horses in action.
+Besides, the drama of action in character, which is the type of drama
+introduced into English literature by Browning, has reached a more perfect
+development in other hands. Ibsen&#8217;s dramas are pre&euml;minently dramas of
+action in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>character, but the action moves with such rapidity that the
+audience is almost cheated into thinking they are the old thing over
+again&mdash;that is, dramas of characters in action.</p>
+
+<p>Browning&#8217;s characters in his dramas are presented with a completeness of
+psychological analysis which makes them of paramount interest to those few
+who can and like to listen to people holding forth to any length on the
+stage, and with superb actors, who can give every subtlest change of mood,
+a Browning drama furnishes an opportunity for the utmost intensity of
+pleasure. Still, one cannot help but feel that the impressionistic
+psychology of Ibsen reaches a pinnacle of dramatic art not attained by
+Browning in his plays, delightful in character portrayal as they are, and
+not upon any account to have been missed from dramatic literature.</p>
+
+<p>In the dramatic monologue Browning found just that form which would focus
+his forces, bringing them into the sort of relationship needed to reveal
+the true law of being for his new region of poetic art.</p>
+
+<p>If we inquire just why this form was the true medium for the most perfect
+expression of his genius, I think we may answer that in it, as he has
+developed it, is given an opportunity for the legitimate exercise of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+mental subtlety. Through the voice of one speaker he can portray not only
+the speaker but one or more other characters, and at the same time show
+the scene setting, and all without any direct description. On the other
+hand, his tendency to redundancy, so marked when he is making a character
+reveal only his own personality, is held in check by the necessity of
+using just those words and turns of expression and dwelling upon just
+those details which will make each character stand out distinctly, and at
+the same time bring the scene before the reader.</p>
+
+<p>The people in his dramatic monologues live before us by means of a
+psychology as impressionistic as that of Ibsen&#8217;s in his plays. The effect
+is the same as that in a really great impressionistic painting. Nature is
+revealed far more distinctly&mdash;the thing of lights and shadows, space and
+movement&mdash;than in pictures bent upon endless details of form. &#8220;My Last
+Duchess&#8221; is one among many fine examples of his method in monologue. In
+that short poem we are made to see what manner of man is the duke, what
+manner of woman the duchess. We see what has been the duke&#8217;s past, what is
+to be his future, also the present scene, as the duke stands in the hall
+of his palace talking to an ambassador<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> from the count who has come to
+arrange a marriage with the duke for the count&#8217;s daughter. Besides all
+this a glimpse of the ambassador&#8217;s attitude of mind is given. This is done
+by an absolutely telling choice of words and by an organic relationing of
+the different elements. The law of his genius asserts itself.</p>
+
+<p>Browning&#8217;s own ideal of the poet who makes others see was not completely
+realized until he had perfected a form which would lend itself most
+perfectly to the manner of thing which he desired to make others
+see&mdash;namely, the human soul in all its possible manifestations of feeling
+and mood, good, bad, and indifferent, from the uninspired organist who
+struggles with a mountainous fugue to the inspired improvisor whose soul
+ascends to God on the wings of his music, from the unknown sensitive
+painter who cannot bear to have his pictures the subject of criticism or
+commerce to the jolly life-loving Fra Lippo, from the jealous, vindictive
+woman of &#8220;The Laboratory&#8221; to the vision-seeing Pompilia, from Ned Bratts
+to Bishop Blougram, and so on&mdash;so many and wonderful that custom cannot
+state their infinite variety.</p>
+
+<p>Consistent, so far, with his own theories we find the work of Browning to
+be. He also follows his ideal in the discarding of classical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> allusion
+and illustration. Part of his dictum that the form should express the
+thought is shown in his habitual fitting of his allusions to the subject
+he is treating. By this means he produces his atmosphere and brings the
+scene clearly before us; witness his constant references to Molinos and
+his influence in &#8220;The Ring and the Book,&#8221; an influence which was making
+itself felt in all classes of society at the time when the actual tragedy
+portrayed in the poem occurred. This habit, of course, brings into his
+poetry a far wider range of allusions unfamiliar to his contemporaries
+than is to be found in other Victorian poets, and makes it necessary that
+these should be &#8220;looked up&#8221; before an adequate enjoyment of their fitness
+is possible. Hence the Browning societies, so often held up to ridicule by
+the critics, who blindly prefer to show their superior attitude of mind in
+regard to everything they do not know, and growl about his obscurity, to
+welcoming any movement which means an increase of general culture. The
+Browning societies have not only done much to make Browning&#8217;s unusual
+allusions common matters of knowledge, but they have helped to keep alive
+a taste for all poetry in an age when poetry has needed all the friendly
+support it could get.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>All great poets lead the ordinary mind to unfamiliar regions of knowledge
+and thereby to fresh planes of enjoyment. That Browning has outdone all
+other poets in this particular should be to his honor, not to his
+dispraise.</p>
+
+<p>In one very marked direction, however, he is not a perfect exemplar of his
+own theories&mdash;that is, he is not always consistently dramatic. He belongs
+to that order of poets described by himself in the Shelley Introduction as
+neither completely subjective nor completely objective, but with the two
+faculties at times running in upon each other. He is often absolutely
+objective in his expression of a mood or a feeling, but the moment the
+mood takes upon it the tinge of thought we begin to feel Browning himself.</p>
+
+<p>The fundamental principles upon which he bases his own solution of the
+problems of existence are seen to crop out, colored, it is true, by the
+personality of the speaker, but yet traceable to their source in the
+mental make up of Browning himself. It may well be that Browning has come
+so near to the ultimate truth discoverable by man in his fundamental
+principles that they are actually universal truths, to be found lying deep
+down at the roots of all more partial expressions, just as gravitation,
+conservation of energy, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>evolution underlie every phenomena of nature,
+and therefore when a Pope in &#8220;The Ring and the Book,&#8221; a Prince
+Hohenstiel-Swangau, a Bishop Blougram, a Cleon or a John in &#8220;The Death in
+the Desert,&#8221; give utterance to their views upon life, they are bound to
+touch from one or another angle the basic principles of life common to all
+humanity as well as to the poet&mdash;the center within us all where &#8220;truth
+abides in fulness.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This would seem an even more complete fusing of the two faculties in one
+poet than that spoken of by Browning, where a poet would issue successive
+works, in some of them the one faculty and in some of them the other
+faculty being supreme.</p>
+
+<p>That Browning was, to a certain extent, a poet of this third order of
+which he prophesied is true, for he has written a number of poems like &#8220;La
+Saisiaz,&#8221; &#8220;Reverie,&#8221; various of his prologues and epilogues which are
+purely subjective in content. There are also subjective passages in the
+midst of other poems, like those in &#8220;Sordello,&#8221; &#8220;Prince Hohenstiel,&#8221; the
+&#8220;Parleyings,&#8221; etc. If we place such a poem as &#8220;Reverie&#8221; side by side with
+&#8220;Fra Lippo Lippi&#8221; we see well-nigh perfect illustrations of the two
+faculties as they existed in the one poet, Browning. On the other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> hand,
+in those poems where the thought, as I have said, suggests Browning, in
+the speech of his characters he has something of the quality of what
+Browning calls the subjective poet of modern classification. &#8220;Gifted like
+the objective poet, with the fuller perception of nature and man, he is
+impelled to embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to
+the many below as to the One above him, the supreme intelligence which
+apprehends all things in their absolute truth, an ultimate view ever
+aspired to, if but partially attained, by the poet&#8217;s soul.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Browning may be said to have carried to its flood tide the &#8220;Liberal
+Movement in English Literature,&#8221; as Courthope calls it, inaugurated at the
+dawn of the century by the Lake School, which reacted against the correct
+school of Dryden and Pope. Along with the earlier poets of the century he
+shared lack of appreciation at the hands of critics in general. The
+critics had been bred in the school of the eighteenth century, and
+naturally would be incapable of understanding a man whose thought was
+permeated with the doctrines of evolution, then an unknown quantity except
+to the elect in scientific circles, and not to become the possession of
+the thinking world at large until beyond the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> middle of the century;
+whose soul was full of the ardor of democracy, shown not only in his
+choice and treatment of subjects, but in his reckless independence of all
+the shibboleths of the past; and whose liberalness in the treatment of
+moral and religious problems was such as to scandalize many in an age when
+the law forbade that a man should marry his deceased wife&#8217;s sister, and
+when the Higher Criticism of the Bible had not yet migrated to England
+from Germany; and, finally, whose style was everything that was atrocious
+because entirely different from anything they had seen before.</p>
+
+<p>The century had to grow up to him. It is needless to say that it did so.
+Just as out of the turmoil of conflicting scientific and religious thought
+has emerged a serene belief in man&#8217;s spiritual destiny, so out of the
+turmoil of conflicting schools of criticism has arisen a perception of the
+value of the new, the original, the different in art. Critics begin to
+apply the principles of evolution to their criticism as Browning applied
+it to his art, with the result that they no longer measure by past
+standards of art but by relating the art to the life of the time in its
+various manifestations, not forgetting that the poet or the dramatist may
+have a further vision of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> what is to come than any other man of his age.</p>
+
+<p>The people first, for the most part, found out that here in Browning&#8217;s
+work was a new force, and calmly formed themselves into groups to study
+what manner of force it might be, regardless of the sneers of newspaperdom
+and conventional academies. And gradually to the few appreciative critics
+of the early days have been added one authoritative voice after another
+until the chorus of praise has become a large one, and Browning, though
+later than any great poet of the century, is coming into his own.</p>
+
+<p>In a certain chart of English literature with which I am acquainted,
+wherein the poets are graphically represented in mountain ranges with
+peaks of various heights, Tennyson is shown as the towering peak of the
+Victorian Era, while Browning is a sturdy but much lower peak with a
+blunted top. This is quite symbolic of the general attitude toward
+Browning at the end of the century, for, with all the appreciation, there
+has been on the part of authority a disinclination to assign to him the
+chief place among the poets of the Victorian Era. Courthope, who most of
+the time preserves a remarkable reticence upon Browning, voices this
+general attitude<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> in a remark ventured upon in one of his lectures in
+1900. He says:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No one who is capable of appreciating genius will refuse to admire the
+powers of this poet, the extent of his sympathy and interest in external
+things, the boldness of his invention, the energy of his analysis, the
+audacity of his experiments. But so absolutely does he exclude all
+consideration for the reader from his choice of subject, so arbitrarily,
+in his treatment of his themes, does he compel his audience to place
+themselves at his own point of view, that the life of his art depends
+entirely upon his own individuality. Should future generations be less
+inclined than our own to surrender their imagination to his guidance, he
+will not be able to appeal to them through that element of life which lies
+in the Universal.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>To the present writer this seems simply like a confession on Courthope&#8217;s
+part that he was unable to perceive in Browning the elements of the
+Universal which are most assuredly there, and which were fully recognized
+by a Scotch writer, Dawson, at the same time that Courthope was
+questioning his power to hold coming generations.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The fashions of the world may change,&#8221; writes Dawson, &#8220;and the old doubts
+may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> wear themselves out and sink like shadows out of sight in the
+morning of a stronger faith; but even so the world will still turn to the
+finer poems of Browning for intellectual stimulus, for the purification of
+pity and of pathos, for the exaltation of hope.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Or if the darkness still thickens, all the more will men turn to this
+strong man of the race, who has wrestled and prevailed; who has illumined
+with imaginative insight the deepest problems of the ages; who has made
+his poetry not merely the vehicle of pathos, passion, tenderness, fancy,
+and imagination, but also of the most robust and masculine thought. He has
+written lyrics which must charm all who love, epics which must move all
+who act, songs which must cheer all who suffer, poems which must fascinate
+all who think; and when &#8216;Time hath sundered shell from pearl,&#8217; however
+stern may be the scrutiny, it may be said that there will remain enough of
+Robert Browning to give him rank among the greatest of poets, and secure
+for him the sure reward of fame.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But it is to France we must go for the surest authoritative note&mdash;that
+land of the Academy and correct taste which <i>hums</i> and <i>hahs</i> over its own
+Immortals in proverbially <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>unpenetrating conclave. No less a man than
+Taine declares that Browning stands first among English poets&mdash;&#8220;the most
+excellent where excellence is greatness, the most gifted where genius is a
+common dower.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>While there can be no doubt that Browning outdid all the other great poets
+of his time in &#8220;azure feats,&#8221; in developing an absolutely self-centered
+ideal of art, which is yet so true to the ultimate tendencies of the
+century, indeed to those of all time, for evolution and democracy are
+henceforth the torch-bearers of the human soul&mdash;each of the other
+half-dozen or so greatest poets had distinct and independent
+individualities which were more nearly the outcome of the current
+tendencies of the time than Browning&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 346px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/img10.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Tennyson was equally familiar with the thought and much more familiar with
+the politics of the day, but there is an infinite difference in their
+attitude. Browning, if I may be excused for quoting one of Shakespeare&#8217;s
+most abused phrases, rides over the century like a &#8220;naked new-born babe
+striding the blast.&#8221; Tennyson ambles through it on a palfrey which has a
+tendency to flounder into every slough of despond it comes to. This may
+seem to be putting it rather too<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> strongly, but is it not true? Browning
+has the vision belonging to the latest child of time. He never follows; he
+leads. With his eyes fixed upon a far-off future where man shall be <i>man</i>
+at last, he faces every problem with the intrepidity of an &OElig;dipus
+confronting the Sphynx. The mystery of its riddles has no terrors for him.
+It is given to him as to few others to see the ineffable beauty of life&#8217;s
+mystery, the promise it holds out of eternal joy. While he frequently
+discourses upon the existence of evil, he never for a moment admits any
+doubt into his own utmost soul of the beneficent part evil is meant to
+play in the molding of human destinies. Mr. Santayana has called him a
+barbarous poet. In a certain sense he is, if to be born among the first on
+a new plane of psychic perception where of no account become the endless
+metaphysical meanderings of the intellect, which cry &#8220;proof, proof, where
+there can be no proof,&#8221; is barbarous. It was doubtless largely owing to
+this power of vision reminding us again somewhat of the child&#8217;s in
+Maeterlinck&#8217;s &#8220;Les Aveugles&#8221; which kept Browning from tinkering in the
+half-measures of the political leaders of his time. His plane is not
+unlike that of his own Lazarus, about whom the Arab physician says:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+&#8220;The man is witless of the size, the sum,<br />
+The value in proportion of all things,<br />
+Or whether it be little or be much.<br />
+Discourse to him of prodigious armament<br />
+Assembled to besiege his city now,<br />
+And of the passing of a mule with gourds&mdash;<br />
+&#8217;Tis one! Then take it on the other side,<br />
+Speak of some trifling fact,&mdash;he will gaze rapt<br />
+With stupor at its very littleness,<br />
+(For as I see) as if in that indeed<br />
+He caught prodigious import, whole results;<br />
+And so will turn to us the bystanders<br />
+In ever the same stupor (note this point)<br />
+That we, too, see not with his opened eyes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The import of an event is everything. Large imports may lurk more surely
+in the awakening of some obscure soul than in the pageantry of law
+bringing a tardy and wholly inadequate measure of justice to humanity.
+Though Tennyson talks of the &#8220;far-off divine event&#8221; he has no burning
+conviction of it and does not ride toward it with triumph in his eye and
+flaming joy in his soul. As he ambles along, steeping himself in the
+science of the time, its revelations make him nervous; he falls into doubt
+from which he can only extricate himself by holding on to belief, a very
+different thing from Browning&#8217;s vision.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it happens that Tennyson voices the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> feelings of an immense class of
+cultured people, who have gone through the century in the same ambling
+fashion, a prey to its fears, intellectual enough to see the truths of
+science, but not spiritual enough to see the import of the dawn of the new
+day.</p>
+
+<p>Tennyson, then, quite of and in his time, would desire above all things to
+appeal to it as it appealed to him. He waxes enthusiastic over
+conventional politics, he treats his social problems so entirely in
+accordance with the conventions of the day that they are not problems at
+all, and he is quite in love with the beauty of aristocratic society,
+though he occasionally descends to the people for a subject. These are all
+entirely sufficient reasons for his popularity as a poet during his life,
+further emphasized by the added fact that having no subject matter (that
+is thought-content) wherewith to startle the world by strangeness, he took
+the wiser part of delighting them with his exquisite music.</p>
+
+<p>Though so satisfactory a representative of his times, he did outrage one
+of the shibboleths of the critics in his efforts to find a new and richer
+music than poets had before used by bringing scientific imagery into his
+verse. Of all the absurd controversies indulged in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> by critics, the most
+absurd is that fought out around the contention that science and poetry
+cannot be made to harmonize. Wordsworth was keen enough to see this before
+the rest of the world and prophesied in the preface to his &#8220;Lyrical
+Ballads&#8221; that science would one day become the closest of allies to
+poetry, and Tennyson was brilliant enough to seize the new possibilities
+in scientific language with a realization that nature imagery might almost
+be made over by the use in describing it of scientific epithets. A famous
+illustration of the happy effects he produced by these means is in the
+lines &#8220;Move eastward happy Earth and round again to-night.&#8221; His
+observation of Nature, moreover, had a scientific accuracy, which made
+possible far more delicate and individual descriptions of Nature&#8217;s aspects
+than had been produced before. It was also a happy thought for him to
+weave so much of his poetry around the Arthurian legends. Beautiful in
+themselves, they came nearer home than classical or Italian legends, and,
+when made symbolic of an ideal which must appeal to the heart of every
+cultured Englishman, who regarded himself as a sort of prototype of the
+blameless King Arthur, and whose grief at the failure of the social fabric
+planned by him would be as poignant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> as that of the King himself, they
+carried with them a romantic and irresistible attraction.</p>
+
+<p>The reasons why Tennyson should appeal especially to the nineteenth
+century cultured and highly respectable Englishman far outweighed any
+criticisms that might be made by critics on his departure from poetic
+customs of the past. He pleased the highest powers in the land, became
+Laureate and later Lord Tennyson. He will therefore always remain the poet
+most thoroughly representative of that especial sort of beauty belonging
+to a social order which has reached a climax of refinement and
+intelligence, but which, through its very self-satisfaction, cuts itself
+off from a perception of the true value of the new forces coming into play
+in the on-rushing stream of social development.</p>
+
+<p>The other poets who divide with Browning and Tennyson the highest honors
+of the Victorian Era are Landor, Arnold, Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, Mrs.
+Browning, George Meredith.</p>
+
+<p>Landor and Arnold preserved more than any of the others a genuine
+classical aroma in their verse, and on this account have always been
+delighted in by a few. After all, the people may not immediately accept a
+poet of too great independence, but they are least of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> all likely to grow
+enthusiastic over anything reactionary either in style or thought.
+Romantic elements of not too startling a character win the favor of most
+readers.</p>
+
+<p>Though classic in style both these poets reflected phases of the century&#8217;s
+thought. Landor differed from Browning in the fact that he frequently
+expressed himself vigorously upon the subject of current politics. His
+political principles were not of the most advanced type, however. He
+believed in the notion of a free society, but seems to have thought the
+best way of attaining it would be a commonwealth in which the wise should
+rule, and see that the interests of all should be secured. Still his
+insistence upon liberty, however old-fashioned his ideas of the means by
+which it should be maintained, puts him in the line of the democratic
+march of the century.</p>
+
+<p>Swinburne calls him his master, and represents himself in verse as having
+learned many wise and gracious things of him, but his thought was not
+sufficiently progressive to triumph over the classicism of his style in an
+age of romantic poetry, though there will always be those who hold on to
+the shibboleth that, after all, the classic is the real thing in poetry,
+never realizing that where the romantic is old enough, it, too, becomes
+classic.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>Matthew Arnold stands in poetry where men like Huxley and Clifford stood
+in science, who, Childe-Roland like, came to the dark tower, calmly put
+the slug horn to their lips and blew a blast of courage. Science had
+undermined their belief in a future life as well as destroying the
+revealed basis of moral action. In such a man the intellectual nature
+overbalances the intuitional, and when inherited belief based on authority
+is destroyed, there is nothing but the habit of morality left.</p>
+
+<p>Arnold has had the sympathy of those who could no longer believe in their
+revealed religion, but who loved it and regretted its passing away from
+them. He gives expression to this feeling in lines like these:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 8em;">&#8220;The sea of faith</span><br />
+Was once, too, at the full, and round earth&#8217;s shore<br />
+Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl&#8217;d.<br />
+But now I only hear<br />
+Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,<br />
+Retreating, to the breath<br />
+Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear<br />
+And naked shingles of the world.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The regret for something beautiful that is gone is capable of exquisite
+poetic treatment, but it is not an abiding note of the century. It
+represents only one phase of its thought,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> and that a transcient one,
+because it could be felt with poignancy only by those whose lives were
+rudely shaken by the destruction of the ideal in which they had been bred
+and in which they devoutly believed. Arnold&#8217;s sympathetic treatment of
+this phase of doubt seems, however, to have been of incalculable service
+to those who felt as he did. It softened the anguish of the shock to have
+not only the beauty of the past dwelt upon, but to have the beauty of
+courage in the face of a destroyed ideal erected into a new ideal for
+living brave and noble lives. In &#8220;Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse&#8221; is a
+fine example of the beauty which may be imparted to a mood as melancholy
+as could well be imagined:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Not as their friend, or child, I speak!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But as, on some far northern strand,</span><br />
+Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In pity and mournful awe might stand</span><br />
+Before some fallen Runic stone&mdash;<br />
+For both were faiths, and both are gone.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Wandering between two worlds, one dead<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The other powerless to be born,</span><br />
+With nowhere yet to rest my head,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Like these, on earth I wait forlorn,</span><br />
+Their faith, my tears, the world deride&mdash;<br />
+I come to shed them at their side.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Such hope as he has to offer comes out in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> stanzas like the following,
+but all is dependent upon strenuous living:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;No, no! the energy of life may be<br />
+Kept on after the grave, but not begun;<br />
+And he who flagg&#8217;d not in the earthly strife,<br />
+From strength to strength advancing&mdash;only he,<br />
+His soul well-knit, and all his battle won,<br />
+Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Nor shall better days on earth come without struggle since life</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Is on all sides o&#8217;ershadowed by the high<br />
+Uno&#8217;erleaped Mountains of Necessity,<br />
+Sparing us narrower margin than we deem.<br />
+Nor will that day dawn at a human nod,<br />
+When, bursting through the network, superposed<br />
+By selfish occupation&mdash;plot and plan,<br />
+Lust, avarice, envy-liberated man,<br />
+All difference with his fellow-mortal closed,<br />
+Shall be left standing face to face with God.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Though Arnold was sternly criticised he had before the end of the century
+been accorded his proper place as a poet, which was that of the chief poet
+between the greatest lights of the century, Browning and Tennyson and the
+pre-Raphaelite group. Gosse, with more penetration than can always be
+accorded to him, declares that &#8220;His devotion to beauty, the composure,
+simplicity and dignity of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> temper, and his deep moral sincerity gave
+to his poetry a singular charm which may prove as durable as any element
+in modern verse.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The phase of romanticism carried to its climax by the pre-Raphaelite poets
+Rossetti and his sister, Morris and Swinburne had, like the work of
+Tennyson, its full recognition, in its own time, because these poets, like
+him, have put into exquisite music romantic subjects derived both from the
+classics and from medi&aelig;val legend. The new note of sensuousness, due
+largely to the Italian influence of Rossetti, with his sensuous
+temperament, his intensity of passion and his love of art, and also in
+Morris and Swinburne to their pagan feeling, one of the elements
+inaugurated by the general breaking down of orthodox religious ideals
+through the encroachments of science, does not seem to have affected their
+popularity.</p>
+
+<p>As there were those who would sympathize with the Tennysonian attitude
+toward doubt, and those who would sympathize with Matthew Arnold&#8217;s, there
+were others to feel like Swinburne, pantheistic, and, like Morris, utterly
+hopeless of a future, while others again might criticise the pagan
+feeling, but, with their inheritance of beauty from Tennyson and his
+predecessors of the dawn of the century, would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> delight in these new
+developments of the romantic spirit.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img11.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A. C. Swinburne</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Ruskin is said to have been the original inspirer of these four poets,
+though Fitz-Gerald&#8217;s &#8220;Rubaiyat&#8221; of Omar Khayy&aacute;m was not without its
+influence. But as Edmund Gosse says, &#8220;The attraction of the French
+romances of chivalry for William Morris, of Tuscan painting for D. G.
+Rossetti, of the spirit of English Gothic architecture for Christina
+Rossetti, of the combination of all these with Greek and Elizabethan
+elements for Swinburne, were to be traced back to start&mdash;words given by
+the prophetic author of the &#8216;Seven Lamps of Architecture.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Though the first books of this group of poets, the &#8220;Defence of Guenevere&#8221;
+(1858), &#8220;Goblin Market,&#8221; &#8220;Early Italian Poets,&#8221; &#8220;Queen Mother and
+Rosamond&#8221; (1861), did not make any impression on the public, with the
+publication of Swinburne&#8217;s &#8220;Atalanta in Calydon&#8221; an interest was awakened
+which reached a climax with the publication of Rossetti&#8217;s poems in 1870.
+Rossetti had thrown these poems into his wife&#8217;s grave, as the world knows,
+but was prevailed upon to have them recovered and published.</p>
+
+<p>In the success of this group was vindicated at last the principles of the
+naturalists of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> dawn of the century. Here was a mixture of color, of
+melody, of mysticism, of sensuousness, of elaboration of form which
+carried originality and independence as far as it could well go in a
+direction which painted life primarily from the outside. But when this
+brilliant culminating flash of the early school of Coleridge and Keats
+began to burn itself out, there was Tennyson, who might be called the
+conservative wing of the romantic movement, dominant as ever, and
+Browning, the militant wing, advanced from his mid-century obscurity into
+a flood-tide of appreciation which was to bear him far onward toward
+literary pre-eminence, placing him among the few greatest names in
+literature.</p>
+
+<p>The originality of the pre-Raphaelites grew out of their welding of
+romantic, classical, and medi&aelig;val elements, tempered in each case by the
+special mental attitude of the poet.</p>
+
+<p>Rossetti and his brother artists, Millais and Holman Hunt, who founded the
+pre-Raphaelite brotherhood of painters, pledged themselves to the
+fundamental principle laid down by Rossetti in the little magazine they
+started called the <i>Germ</i>. This new creed was simple enough and ran: &#8220;The
+endeavor held in view throughout the writings on art will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> be to
+encourage and enforce an entire adherence to the simplicity of Nature.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In their interpretation and development of this simple principle, artists
+and the poets who joined them differentiated from one another often to a
+wide extent. In Rossetti, it becomes an adoration of the beauty of woman
+expressed in ultra-sensuous though not in sensual imagery, combined with
+an atmosphere of religious wonder such as one finds in medi&aelig;val poets, of
+which &#8220;The Blessed Damozel&#8221; stands as a typical example. In it, as one
+appreciator has said, all the qualities of Rossetti&#8217;s poetry are found.
+&#8220;He speaks alternately like a seer and an artist; one who is now bewitched
+with the vision of beauty, and now is caught up into Paradise, where he
+hears unutterable things. To him the spiritual world is an intense
+reality. He hears the voices, he sees the presences of the supernatural.
+As he mourns beside the river of his sorrow, like Ezekiel, he has his
+visions of winged and wheeling glory, and leaning over the ramparts of the
+world his gaze is fixed on the uncovered mysteries of a world to come.
+There is no poet to whom the supernatural has been so much alive.
+Religious doubt he seems never to have felt. But the temper of religious
+wonder, the old, childlike, monkish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> attitude of awe and faith in the
+presence of the unseen, is never absent in him. The artistic force of his
+temperament drives him to the worship of beauty; the poetic and religious
+forces to the adoration of mystery.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>To Swinburne the simplicity of nature included the utmost lengths to which
+eroticism could go. Upon this ground he has been severely censured and he
+has had an unfortunate influence upon scores and scores of younger writers
+who have seemed to think that the province of the poet is to decry the
+existence of sincere affection, and who in their turn have exercised
+actual mischief in lowering social standards.</p>
+
+<p>This is not all of Swinburne, however. His superb metrical power is his
+chief contribution to the originality of this group, and when he developed
+away from his nauseating eroticism, he could charm as no one else with his
+delicious music, though it often be conspicuous for its lack of richness
+in thought.</p>
+
+<p>His fate has been somewhat different from that of most poets. When his
+&#8220;Atalanta in Calydon&#8221; was published it was received with enthusiasm, but
+the volumes overweighted with eroticism which followed caused a fierce
+controversy, and many have not even yet discovered that this was only one
+phase of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> Swinburne&#8217;s art, and that, unfortunate as it is in many
+respects, it was a phase of the century&#8217;s life which must find its
+expression in art if that life is to be completely given, and that it was
+a passing phase Swinburne himself proved in the development of other
+phases shown in his interest in current political situations, his
+enthusiasm for Italy and his later expressions of high moral ideals, as
+well as in a quasi-religious attitude of mind, not so far from that of
+Emerson, himself, in which strong emphasis is placed upon the importance
+of the individual, and upon the unity of God and man.</p>
+
+<p>There is moral courage and optimism in the face of doubt of a high order
+in the following lines:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&mdash;&#8220;Are ye not weary and faint not by the way<br />
+Seeing night by night devoured of day by day,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Seeing hour by hour consumed in sleepless fire?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sleepless; and ye too, when shall ye, too sleep?</span><br />
+&mdash;We are weary in heart and head, in hands and feet,<br />
+And surely more than all things sleep were sweet,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Than all things save the inexorable desire</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Which whoso knoweth shall neither faint nor weep.</span><br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Is this so sweet that one were fain to follow?<br />
+Is this so sure when all men&#8217;s hopes are hollow,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Even this your dream, that by much tribulation</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ye shall make whole flawed hearts, and bowed necks straight?</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>&mdash;Nay though our life were blind, our death were fruitless,<br />
+Not therefore were the whole world&#8217;s high hope rootless;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But man to man, nation would turn to nation,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And the old life live, and the old great word be great.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>But Swinburne in his farthest reaches of pantheistic aspiration is to be
+seen in a poem like &#8220;Hertha&#8221;:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">&#8220;I am that which began;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Out of me the years roll;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Out of me God and man;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">I am equal and whole;</span><br />
+God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">&#8220;The tree many-rooted</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">That swells to the sky</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">With frondage red-fruited</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">The life-tree am I;</span><br />
+In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves; ye shall live and not die.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">&#8220;But the Gods of your fashion</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">That take and that give,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">In their pity and passion</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">That scourge and forgive,</span><br />
+They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they shall die and not live.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">&#8220;My own blood is what stanches</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">The wounds in my bark:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Stars caught in my branches</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Make day of the dark,</span><br />
+And are worshipped as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their fires as a spark.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>Morris&#8217;s interpretation of pre-Raphaelite tenets took him into medi&aelig;val
+legend and the classics for his subject matter. In his first volume, &#8220;The
+Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems,&#8221; he came into competition with
+Tennyson, who was at the same time issuing his Arthurian legends. The
+polish of Tennyson&#8217;s verse, as well as its symbolical meaning for the
+time, was more acceptable than the actual return to the nature of the
+fifteenth century, and this the first volume from a pre-Raphaelite was
+hardly noticed by the critics. Morris sulked within his literary tents for
+ten years before he again appeared, this time with &#8220;The Life and Death of
+Jason&#8221; (1867), which immediately became popular. Later came the &#8220;Earthly
+Paradise.&#8221; These tales, in verse noble and simple, in style recalling the
+tales of Chaucer, yet with a charm all their own, in which the real men
+and women of Chaucer give place to types, have been the delight of those
+who like to find in poetry a dreamland of romance where they may enjoy
+themselves far from the problems and toils of everyday life. He differs
+from all the other poets of this group in his lack of religious hope. His
+mind was of the type that could not stand up against the undermining
+influences of the age: hence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> world-weariness and despair are the
+constantly recurring notes.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img12.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Dante Gabriel Rossetti</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Browning far outdistanced her husband in the early days in
+popularity. She pleased the people by her social enthusiasm, a
+characteristic more marked in her verse than in that of any of the poets
+mentioned. The critics have found many faults in her style, mainly those
+growing out of an impassioned nature which carried her at times beyond the
+realm of perfectly balanced art. But even an English critic of the
+conservatism of Edmund Gosse could at last admit that &#8220;In some of her
+lyrics and more rarely in her sonnets she rose to heights of passionate
+humanity which place her only just below the great poets of her country.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Contemporary criticism of &#8220;Aurora Leigh,&#8221; which was certainly a departure
+both in form and matter from the accepted standards, was, on the whole,
+just. <i>The Quarterly Review</i> in 1862 said of it: &#8220;This &#8216;Aurora Leigh&#8217; is a
+great poem. It is a wonder of art. It will live. No large audience will it
+have, but it will have audience; and that is more than most poems have. To
+those who know what poetry is and in what struggles it is born&mdash;how the
+great thoughts justify themselves&mdash;this work will be looked upon as one of
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> wonders of the age.&#8221; Mrs. Browning resembles her husband in the fact
+that she does not fit into the main line of evolution of the romantic
+school, but is an individual manifestation of the romantic spirit, showing
+almost as great freedom from the trammels of accepted romanticism as
+Browning does.</p>
+
+<p>The writer of the century whose experience as a novelist almost paralleled
+that of Browning as poet was Meredith. Because of his psychological
+analysis and the so-called obscurity of his style, he waited many years
+for recognition and finally was accepted as one of the most remarkable
+novelists of the age. His poetry, showing similar tendencies, and
+overshadowed by his novels, has not yet emerged into the light of
+universal appreciation. One finds it even ignored altogether in the most
+recent books of English literature, yet he is the author of one of the
+most remarkable series of sonnets in the English language, &#8220;Modern Love,&#8221;
+presenting, as it does, a vivid picture of domestic decadence which forms
+a strange contrast to Rossetti&#8217;s sonnets, &#8220;The House of Life,&#8221; indicating
+how many and various have been the forces at work during the nineteenth
+century in the disintegrating and molding of social ideals. Meredith
+writes of &#8220;Hiding the Skeleton&#8221;.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+&#8220;At dinner she is hostess, I am host.<br />
+Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps<br />
+The topic over intellectual deeps<br />
+In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost.<br />
+With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball:<br />
+It is in truth a most contagious game;<br />
+<i>Hiding the Skeleton</i> shall be its name.<br />
+Such play as this the devils might appall,<br />
+But here&#8217;s the greater wonder; in that we,<br />
+Enamor&#8217;d of our acting and our wits,<br />
+Admire each other like true hypocrites.<br />
+Warm-lighted glances, Love&#8217;s Ephemeral,<br />
+Shoot gayly o&#8217;er the dishes and the wine.<br />
+We waken envy of our happy lot.<br />
+Fast sweet, and golden, shows our marriage-knot.<br />
+Dear guests, you now have seen Love&#8217;s corpse-light shine!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rossetti writes &#8220;Lovesight&#8221;:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;When do I see thee most, beloved one?<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When in the light the spirits of mine eyes</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Before thy face, their altar, solemnize</span><br />
+The worship of that Love through thee made known?<br />
+Or when, in the dusk hours (we two alone),<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Close-kiss&#8217;d and eloquent of still replies</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thy twilight&mdash;hidden glimmering visage lies,</span><br />
+And my soul only sees thy soul its own?<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O love, my love! if I no more should see</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,</span><br />
+Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How then should sound upon Life&#8217;s darkening slope,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The ground-whirl of the perish&#8217;d leaves of Hope,</span><br />
+The wind of Death&#8217;s imperishable wing?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>Browning&#8217;s criticism of painting was evidently much influenced by the
+pre-Raphaelites. Their admiration for the painters who preceded Raphael,
+revealing as it did to them an art not satisfied with itself, but reaching
+after higher things, and earnestly seeking to interpret nature and human
+life, is echoed in his &#8220;Old Pictures in Florence,&#8221; which was written but
+six years after Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti formed their brotherhood. In
+poetry, they did not eschew classical subjects, as Browning did for the
+most part, but they treated these subjects in a romantic spirit, and so
+removed them from the sort of strictures that Browning made upon the
+perfection of Greek art.</p>
+
+<p>From this summary of the chief lines of literary development in the
+nineteenth century it will be seen, not only what a marvelous age it has
+been for the flowering of individualism in literary invention, but how
+Browning has surpassed all the other poets of note in the wideness of his
+departure from accepted standards, and how helpless the earlier critics
+were in the face of this departure, because of their dependence always
+upon critical shibboleths&mdash;in other words, of principles not sufficiently
+universal&mdash;as their means of measuring a poet&#8217;s greatness. Tennyson and
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> pre-Raphaelites won their popularity sooner among critics because
+they followed logically in the line of development inaugurated by the
+earlier poets, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, etc., whose poetry had already
+done some good work in breaking down the school of Dryden and Pope, though
+it succeeded only in erecting another standard not sufficiently universal
+to include Browning. The evolution of art forms, a principle so clearly
+understood, as we have shown by Browning, has never become a guiding one
+with critics, though Mr. Gosse in his &#8220;Modern English Literature&#8221; has
+expressed a wish that the principle of evolution might be adapted to
+criticism. He has evidently felt how hopeless is the task of appraising
+poets by the old individualistic method, which, as he says, has been in
+favor for at least a century. It possesses, he declares, considerable
+effectiveness in adroit hands, but is, after all, an adaptation of the old
+theory of the unalterable type, merely substituting for the one authority
+of the ancients an equal rigidity in a multitude of isolated modern
+instances. For this inflexible style of criticism he proposes that a
+scientific theory shall be adopted which shall enable us at once to take
+an intelligent pleasure in Pope and in Wordsworth, in Spenser and in
+Swift. He writes:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>&#8220;Herbert Spencer has, with infinite courage, opened the entire world of
+phenomena to the principles of evolution, but we seem slow to admit them
+into the little province of &aelig;sthetics. We cling to the individualist
+manner, to that intense eulogy which concentrates its rays on the
+particular object of notice and relegates all others to proportional
+obscurity. There are critics of considerable acumen and energy who seem to
+know no other mode of nourishing a talent or a taste than that which is
+pursued by the cultivators of gigantic gooseberries. They do their best to
+nip off all other buds, that the juices of the tree of fame may be
+concentrated on their favorite fruit. Such a plan may be convenient for
+the purposes of malevolence, and in earlier times our general ignorance of
+the principles of growth might well excuse it. But it is surely time that
+we should recognize only two criteria of literary judgment. The first is
+primitive, and merely clears the ground of rubbish; it is, Does the work
+before us, or the author, perform what he sets out to perform with a
+distinguished skill in the direction in which his powers are exercised? If
+not, he interests the higher criticism not at all; but if yes, then
+follows the second test: Where, in the vast and ever-shifting scheme of
+literary evolution, does he take his place,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> and in what relation does he
+stand, not to those who are least like him, but to those who are of his
+own kith and kin?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img13.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">George Meredith</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>With such principles of criticism as this, the public would sooner be
+brought to an appreciation of all that is best worth while in literature,
+instead of being taken, as it too often is, upon a wrong scent to worship
+at the shrine of the Nokes and Stokes, who simply print blue and eat the
+turtles.</p>
+
+<p>If Mr. Gosse had himself been fully imbued with such principles would he
+have made the statement quoted in chapter two in regard to Browning&#8217;s
+later books? And should we have such senseless criticism as a remark which
+has become popular lately, and which I believe emanated from a university
+in the South&mdash;namely, that Browning never said anything that Tennyson had
+not said better? As an illustration of this a recent critic may be quoted
+who is entirely scornful of the person who prefers Browning&#8217;s</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;God&#8217;s in his heaven, all&#8217;s right with the world&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>to Tennyson&#8217;s</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;And hear at times a sentinel<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who moves about from place to place,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And whispers to the worlds of space</span><br />
+In the deep night that all is well.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>One might reply to this that it is a matter of taste had not Courthope
+shown conclusively that Matthew Arnold&#8217;s criterion of criticism&mdash;namely,
+that a taste which is born of culture is the only certain possession by
+which the critic can measure the beauty of a poet&#8217;s line&mdash;is a fallacy.
+His argument is worth quoting:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;You have stated strongly one side of the truth, but you have ignored,
+completely ignored, the other. You have asserted the claims of
+individual liberty, and up to a certain point I agree with you. I do
+not deny that spiritual liberty is founded on consciousness, and hence
+the self-consciousness of the age is part of the problem we are
+considering. I do not deny that the prevailing rage for novelty must
+also be taken into account. Liberty, variety, novelty, are all
+necessary to the development of Art. Without novelty there can be no
+invention, without variety there can be no character, without liberty
+there can be no life. Life, character, invention, these are of the
+essence of Poetry. But while you have defended with energy the freedom
+of the Individual, you have said nothing of the authority of society.
+And yet the conviction of the existence of this authority is a belief
+perhaps even more firmly founded in the human mind than the sentiment
+as to the rights of individual liberty....</p>
+
+<p>The great majority of the professors of poetry, however various their
+opinions, however opposite their tastes, have felt sure that there was
+in taste, as in science, a theory of false and true; in art, as in
+conduct, a rule of right and wrong. And even among those who have
+asserted most strongly the inward and relative nature of poetry, do
+you think there was one so completely a skeptic as to imagine that he
+was the sole proprietor of the perception he sought to embody in
+words; one who doubted his power, by means of accepted symbols, to
+communicate to his audience his own ideas and feelings about <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>external
+things? Yet until some man shall have been found bold enough to defend
+a thesis so preposterous, we must continue to believe that there is a
+positive standard, by which those at least who speak a common language
+may reason about questions of taste.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>Armed with this gracious permission on the part of a professor of poetry,
+we may venture to reason a little upon the foregoing quotations from
+Tennyson and Browning to the effect that the person of really good taste
+might like each of them in its place. While Tennyson&#8217;s mystical quatrain
+is beautiful and quite appropriate in such a poem as &#8220;In Memoriam,&#8221; it
+would not be in the least appropriate from the lips of a little
+silk-winding girl as she wanders through the streets of Asolo on a sunny
+morning singing her little songs. She is certainly a more lifelike child
+speaking Browningese, as she has often been criticised for doing, than she
+would be if upon this occasion she spoke in a Tennysonian manner. That her
+song has touched the hearts of the twentieth century, if it was not
+altogether appreciated in the nineteenth, is proved by the fact that it is
+one of the most popular songs of the day as set by Mrs. H. H. A. Beach,
+and that the line is heard upon the lips of people to-day who do not even
+know whose it is, and herein lies the ultimate test of greatness.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+<p class="title">CLASSIC SURVIVALS</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Before</span> passing in review Browning&#8217;s treatment of classical subjects as
+compared with the other great poets of the nineteenth century, it will be
+interesting to take a glimpse at his choice of subject-matter in general.</p>
+
+<p>To compare Browning&#8217;s choice of subject-matter with that of other English
+poets is to strike at the very root of his position in the chain of
+literary development. Subject-matter is by no means simple in its nature,
+but as a musical sound is composed of vibrations within vibrations, so it
+is made up of the complex relations of body and spirit&mdash;the mere external
+facts of the story are blended with such philosophical undercurrent, or
+dramatic <i>motif</i>, or unfolding of the hidden springs of action as the poet
+is able to insinuate into it.</p>
+
+<p>However far back one penetrates in the history of poetry, poets will be
+found depending largely upon previous sources, rather than upon their own
+creative genius, for the body<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> of their subject-matter, until the
+question presents itself with considerable force as to who could have been
+the mysterious first poet who supplied plots to the rest of mankind.
+Conjecture is obliged to play a part here, as it does wherever human
+origins are in question. Doubtless, this first poet was no separate
+individual, but simply the elements man and nature, through whose action
+and reaction upon each other grew up story-forms, evidently compounded of
+human customs, and observed natural phenomena such as those we find in the
+great Hindu, Greek, and Teutonic classics, and which thus crystallized
+became great well-springs of inspiration for future generations of poets.</p>
+
+<p>Each new poet, however, who is worthy of the name, sets up his own
+particular interplay with man and nature; and however much he may be
+indebted for his inspiration to past products of this universal law of
+action and reaction, he is bound to use them or interpret them in a manner
+colored by his own personal and peculiar relations with the universe.</p>
+
+<p>In so doing he supplies the more important spiritual side of
+subject-matter and becomes in very truth the poet or maker, to that extent
+at least which Browning himself lays down as the province of art&mdash;namely,
+to arrange,</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+&#8220;Dissociate, redistribute, interchange<br />
+Part with part: lengthen, broaden<br />
+... simply what lay loose<br />
+At first lies firmly after, what design<br />
+Was faintly traced in hesitating line<br />
+Once on a time grows firmly resolute<br />
+Henceforth and evermore.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the poet&#8217;s power of arranging and redistributing and
+interchanging carries him upward into the realm of ideas alone, among
+which his imagination plays in absolute freedom; he throws over the
+results of man&#8217;s past dallyings with Nature and makes his own terms with
+her, and the result is an approach to absolute creation.</p>
+
+<p>Except in the case of lyric poetry the instances where there have been no
+suggestions as to subject-matter are rare in comparison with those where
+the subject-matter has been derived from some source.</p>
+
+<p>Look, for instance, at the father of English poetry, Chaucer, how he
+ransacked French, Italian and Latin literature for his subject-matter,
+most conscientiously carrying out his own saying, that</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Out of olde feldys as men sey<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Comyth all this newe corn from yere to yere,</span><br />
+And out of olde books in good fey<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cometh all this new science that men alere.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>How external a way he had of working over old materials, especially in his
+earlier work, is well illustrated in &#8220;The Parliament of Fowls,&#8221; which he
+opens by relating the dream of Scipio, originally contained in Cicero&#8217;s
+treatise on the &#8220;Republic,&#8221; and preserved by Macrobius. This dream, which
+tells how Africanus appears to Scipio, and carries him up among the stars
+of the night, shows him Carthage, and prophesies to him of his future
+greatness, tells him of the blissful immortal life that is in store for
+those who have served their country, points out to him the brilliant
+celestial fires, and how insignificant the earth is in comparison with
+them, and opens his ears to the wondrous harmony of the spheres&mdash;this
+dream is as far removed from the main argument of the poem as anything
+well could be a contest between three falcons for the hand of a formel.
+The bringing together of such diverse elements presents no difficulties to
+the childlike stage of literary development that depends upon surface
+analogies for the linking together of its thoughts. Just as talking about
+his ancestor, the great Scipio Africanus, with the old King Masinissa
+caused Scipio to dream of him, so reading about this dream caused Chaucer,
+who has to close his book<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> and go to bed for want of a light, to dream of
+Scipio Africanus also, who &#8220;was come and stood right at his bedis syde.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Africanus then plays the part of conductor to Chaucer in a manner
+suggestive not only of his relations to Scipio, but of Virgil&#8217;s relation
+to Dante, and brings him to the great gateway and through it into the
+garden of love. The description is of the temple of Venus in Boccaccio&#8217;s
+&#8220;La Teseide.&#8221; There Nature and the &#8220;Fowls&#8221; are introduced and described,
+and at last the point is reached. Nature proclaims that it is St.
+Valentine&#8217;s day, and all the fowls may choose them mates. The royal falcon
+is given first choice, and chooses the lovely formel that sits upon
+Nature&#8217;s hand. Two other ardent falcons declare their devotion to the same
+fowl, and Nature, when the formel declares that she will serve neither
+Venus nor Cupid and asks a respite for a year, decides that the three
+shall serve their lady another year&mdash;a pretty allegory supposed to refer
+to the wooing of Blanche of Lancaster by John of Gaunt.</p>
+
+<p>The main argument of this poem, when it finally is reached by artificially
+welding together rich links borrowed from other poets, is one of the few
+examples in Chaucer of subject-matter derived direct from a real<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> event,
+but the putting of it in an allegorical form at once lays him under
+obligations to his poetic predecessors, not only on Anglo-Saxon soil, but
+in France and Italy.</p>
+
+<p>His most important contributions as an inventor are, of course, his
+descriptions of the Canterbury Pilgrims, which are the pure outcome of a
+keen observation of men and women at first hand. So lifelike are they that
+in them he has made the England of the fourteenth century live again. But
+how small a proportion of the bulk of the &#8220;Canterbury Tales&#8221; is contained
+in these glimpses of English life and manners. It is but the framework
+upon which luxuriate vines of fancy transplanted from many another garden,
+and even in its place resembling, if not borrowed from, Boccaccio.</p>
+
+<p>The thoroughly human instincts of the poet assert themselves, however, in
+the choice of the tales which he puts into the mouths of his pilgrims. He
+allows a place to the crudities and even the vulgarities of common stories
+as well as to culture-lore. The magic of the East, the love tales of
+Italy, the wisdom of philosophers, the common stories of the people, all
+give up their wealth to his gentle touch. With a keen sense of propriety
+he, with few exceptions, gives each one of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> pilgrims a tale suited in
+its general tendency to the character of its narrator, and in the critical
+chatter of the pilgrims about the tales, reflects not only his own tastes,
+but that of the times, the opinions expressed frequently being most
+uncomplimentary in their tenor.</p>
+
+<p>In fine, the life of reality and the life of books is spread out before
+Chaucer, and his observation of both is keen and interested; and this it
+is which makes him much more than the &#8220;great translator&#8221; that Eustace Les
+Champs called him, and settles the nature of the &#8220;subtle thing&#8221; called
+spirit contributed by the individuality of the poet to his subject-matter.
+He brings everything within the reach of human sympathy, because his way
+of putting a story into his own words is sympathetic. He was a combination
+of the story-teller, the scholar, the poet, and the critic. As a scholar
+he brings in learned allusions that are entirely extraneous to the action
+in hand; as the story-teller, he takes delight in the tales that both the
+poet and the people have told; as the poet, his imagination dresses up a
+story with a fresh environment, often anachronous, and sometimes he alters
+the moral tone of the characters. Cressida is an interesting example of
+this. But instead of the characters suggesting by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> their own action and
+speech all the needed moral, Chaucer himself appears ever at hand to
+analyze and criticise and moralize, though he does it so delightfully that
+one hesitates to call him didactic. The result of all this is that the
+external form and the underlying essence of his subject-matter are not
+completely fused. We often see a sort of guileless working of the
+machinery of art, yet it is true, no doubt, though perhaps not to the
+extent insisted on by Morley, that he has something of the Shakespearian
+quality which enables him to show men as they really are, &#8220;wholly
+developed as if from within, not as described from without by an imperfect
+and prejudiced observer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In his great work, Spenser is no less dependent upon sources for his
+inspiration, but there is a marked difference in his use of them. Although
+his range of observation is much narrower than Chaucer&#8217;s, hardly extending
+at all into the realm of actual human effort, yet he makes an advance in
+so far as his powers of redistribution are much greater than Chaucer&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>The various knights of the &#8220;Fairy Queen&#8221; and their exploits are not
+modeled directly upon any previous stories, but they are made up of
+incidents similar to those found<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> scattered all through classic lore; and
+as his inspirations were drawn in most cases directly from the
+fountain-head of story in the Greek writers&mdash;instead of as they filtered
+through the Latin, Italian, and French, with the inevitable accretions
+that result from migrations,&mdash;and from the comparatively unalloyed
+Arthurian legends, there is a clearer reflection in them of the cosmic
+elements that shine through both the Greek and Arthurian originals than is
+found in Chaucer.</p>
+
+<p>Although Spenser was certainly unaware of any such modern refinement of
+the mythologist as a solar myth, yet the &#8220;Fairy Queen&#8221; forms a curious and
+interesting study on account of the survivals everywhere evident of solar
+characteristics in his characters and plots. Indeed it could hardly be
+otherwise, considering his intention, and his method of carrying it out,
+which he, himself, explains in his quaint letter to Sir Walter
+Raleigh&mdash;namely, &#8220;to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and
+gentle discipline.&#8221; He goes on:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;I close the history of King Arthur as most fit for the excellency of
+his person, being made famous by many men&#8217;s former works, and also
+further from danger and envy of suspicion of present time. In which I
+have followed all the antique poets historical; first Homer, who in
+the person of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governor
+and a virtuous man, the one in his &#8216;Iliad,&#8217; the other in his
+&#8216;Odyssey&#8217;; then Virgil, whose like intention was to do in the person
+of &AElig;neas: After him, Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando, and
+lately Tasso dissevered them again, and formed both parts in two
+persons, the part which they in Philosophy call Ethice or virtues of a
+private man, colored in his Rinaldo, the other, named Politice, in his
+Godfieldo. By example of which excellent poets, I labor to portray in
+Arthur before he was King, the image of a brave Knight perfected in
+the twelve private moral virtues as Aristotle hath devised, the which
+is the purpose of these first twelve books.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>In the fashioning of his knight he took Arthur, a hero whose life as it
+appears in the early romances is inextricably mingled with solar elements,
+and has built up his virtues upon other ancient solar heroes. Here are all
+the paraphernalia of solar mythology: invincible knights with marvelous
+weapons, brazen castles guarded by dragons, marriage with a beautiful
+maiden and parting from the bride to engage in new quests, an enchantress
+who turns men into animals, even the outcast child; but none of the
+incidents appear intact. It is as if there had been a great explosion in
+the ancient land of romance and that in the mending up of things the
+separate pieces are all recognizable, although all joined together in a
+different pattern, while under all is the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> allegory. A gentle knight is
+no longer a solar hero as set forth by Max M&uuml;ller or Cox, but Holiness;
+his invincible armor is not the all-powerful rays of the sun, but truth;
+the enchantress not night casting a spell over mortals, but sensuous
+pleasure entangling them.</p>
+
+<p>These two poets, Chaucer and Spenser, are prototypes of two poet types of
+two poetical tendencies that have gone on developing side by side in
+English literature: Chaucer, democratic, interested supremely in the
+personalities of men and women, portraying the real, and Spenser,
+aristocratic, interested in imaging forth an ideal of manhood, choosing
+his subject-matter from sources that will lend themselves to such a
+purpose; Chaucer drawing his lessons out of the real actions of humanity;
+Spenser framing his story so that it will illustrate the moral he wishes
+to inculcate.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare, of course, ranges himself in line with Chaucer. His interest
+centered on character, and wherever a story capable of character
+development presented itself, that he chose, altered it in outline
+comparatively little, and when he did so it was in order to carry forward
+the dramatic <i>motif</i> which he infused into his subject. The dramatic
+form<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> in which he wrote furnished him a better medium for reaching a
+complete welding together of the external and spiritual side of his
+subject-matter. Where Chaucer hinted at the possibilities of an artistic
+development of character that would cause the events of the story to
+appear as the inevitable outcome of the hidden springs of action,
+Shakespeare accomplished it, and peopled the world of imagination with
+group after group of living, acting characters.</p>
+
+<p>In the nineteenth century Tennyson and Browning have represented, broadly
+speaking, these two tendencies. As with Spenser, the classics and the
+Arthurian legends have been the sources from which Tennyson has drawn most
+largely; but although a philosophical undercurrent is this poet&#8217;s
+spiritual addition to the subject-matter, his method of putting his soul
+inside his work is very different from Spenser&#8217;s. He does not tear the old
+myths to pieces and join them together again after a pattern of his own to
+fit his allegorical situation, but keeps the events of his stories almost
+unchanged, in this particular resembling Chaucer and Shakespeare,
+and&mdash;except in a few instances, such as Tithonus and Lucretius, where the
+classic spirit of the originals is preserved&mdash;he infuses in his subject a
+vein<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> of philosophy, illustrating those modern tendencies of English
+thought of which Tennyson, himself, was the exemplar. Even when inventing
+subjects, founded upon the experiences of everyday life, he so manipulates
+the story as to make it illustrate some of his favorite moral maxims. His
+characters do not act from motives which are the inherent necessities of
+their natures, but they act in accordance with Tennyson&#8217;s preconceived
+notions of how they ought to act. He manipulates the elements of character
+to suit his own view of development, just as Spenser manipulated the
+elements of the story to suit his own allegorical purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Browning is the nineteenth-century heir of Chaucer; but it is doubtful
+whether Chaucer would recognize his own offspring, so remarkable has the
+development been in those five centuries. With Chaucer&#8217;s keen interest in
+human nature deepened to a profound insight into the very soul of
+humanity, and the added wealth of these centuries of human history,
+Browning not only had a far wider range of choice in subject-matter, but
+he was enabled to instil into it greater intellectual and emotional
+complexities.</p>
+
+<p>Rarely has he treated any subject that has already been treated poetically
+unless<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> we except the transcripts from the classics soon to be
+considered. Wherever he saw an interesting historical personage,
+interesting, not on account of his brilliant achievements in the eyes of
+the world, but on account of potentialities of character, such a one he
+has set before us to reveal himself. There are between twenty and thirty
+portraits of this nature in his work, chosen from all sorts and conditions
+of men&mdash;men who stand for some phase of growth in human thought; and
+always in developing a personality he gives the kernel of truth upon which
+their peculiar point of view is based. Thus, among the musical poems, Abt
+Vogler speaks for the intuitionalist&mdash;he who is blessed by a glimpse of
+the absolute truth. Charles Avison, on the other hand, is the philosopher
+of the relative in music and the arts generally. Among the art poems, Fra
+Lippo Lippi is the apostle of beauty in realism, Andrea del Sarto the
+attainer of perfection in form. In the religious poems the Jewish
+standpoint is illustrated in &#8220;Saul&#8221; and &#8220;Rabbi Ben Ezra,&#8221; the Christian in
+the portrait of John in &#8220;The Death in the Desert&#8221;; the empirical reasoner
+in &#8220;Paracelsus.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This is only one of Browning&#8217;s methods in the choice and use of
+subject-matter. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> characters and incidents in his stories are
+frequently the result of pure invention, but he sets them in an
+environment recreated from history, developing their individualities in
+harmony with the environment, thus giving at one stroke the spirit of the
+time and the individual qualities of special representatives of the time.
+Examples of this are: &#8220;My Last Duchess,&#8221; where the Duke is an entirely
+imaginary person and the particular incident is invented, but he is made
+to act and talk in a way perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the
+time&mdash;medi&aelig;val Italy. &#8220;Hugues of Saxe-Gotha&#8221; is another being of
+Browning&#8217;s fancy, who yet represents to perfection the spirit of the old
+fugue writers. &#8220;Luria,&#8221; &#8220;The Soul&#8217;s Tragedy,&#8221; &#8220;In a Balcony,&#8221; all
+represent the same method.</p>
+
+<p>Another plan pursued by the poet is either to invent or borrow a
+historical personage into whose mouth he puts the defence of some course
+of action or ethical standard that may or may not be founded upon the
+highest ideals. Sludge, the hero of &#8220;Fifine at the Fair,&#8221; Bishop Blougram,
+Hohenstiel-Schwangau, range themselves in this group.</p>
+
+<p>There are comparatively few cases where he has taken a complete story and
+developed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> its spiritual possibilities without much change in external
+detail, but how adequate his art was to such ends, &#8220;The Ring and the
+Book,&#8221; &#8220;Inn Album,&#8221; &#8220;Two Poets of Croisic,&#8221; &#8220;Red Cotton Nightcap Country,&#8221;
+the historical dramas of &#8220;Strafford,&#8221; and &#8220;King Victor and King Charles&#8221;
+fully prove, including, as they do, some of his finest masterpieces.</p>
+
+<p>History and story have furnished many of the incidents which he has worked
+up in his dramatic lyrics and romances like &#8220;Clive,&#8221; &#8220;Herv&eacute; Riel,&#8221;
+&#8220;Donald,&#8221; etc. There remains, however, a large number of poems containing
+some of Browning&#8217;s loveliest work in which the subject-matter is, as far
+as we know, the creation of pure, unadulterated fancy. &#8220;A Blot in the
+&#8217;Scutcheon,&#8221; &#8220;In a Balcony,&#8221; &#8220;Colombe&#8217;s Birthday,&#8221; &#8220;Childe Roland,&#8221; &#8220;James
+Lee&#8217;s Wife&#8221; are some of them. Even in this rapid survey of the field the
+fact is patent that Browning&#8217;s range of subject-matter is infinitely wider
+and his method of developing it far more varied than has been that of any
+other English poet. He seems the first to have completely shaken himself
+free from the trammels of classic or medi&aelig;val literature. There are no
+echoes of Arthur and his Knights in his poetry, the shadows of the Greek
+gods and goddesses exert no <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>spell&mdash;except in the few instances when he
+deliberately chose a Greek subject.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that Browning was so free from classical influence in the great
+body of his work as compared with the other chief poets of the nineteenth
+century gives an especial interest to those poems in which he chose
+classical themes for his subjects. There are not more than ten all told,
+and one of these is a translation, yet they represent some of his finest
+and most original work, for Browning could not touch a classical theme
+without infusing into it that grasp and insight peculiar to his own
+genius.</p>
+
+<p>His first and most conventionally classical poem is the fragment in &#8220;Men
+and Women,&#8221; &#8220;Artemis Prologizes,&#8221; written in 1842. It was to have been the
+introduction to a long poem telling of the mad love of Hippolytus for a
+nymph of Artemis, after that goddess had brought about his resuscitation.
+It has been suggested by Mr. Boynton in an interesting paper that Browning
+shows traces of the influence of Landor in his poetry. This fragment
+certainly furnishes argument for this opinion, though it has a strength of
+diction along with its Greek severity and terseness of style which leads
+to the conclusion that the influence came from the fountain head<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> of
+Greek poetry itself rather than through the lesser muse of this
+nineteenth-century Greek.</p>
+
+<p>The poem is said to have been begun on a sick-bed and when the poet
+recovered he had forgotten or lost interest in his plans. This is to be
+regretted for if he had continued as he began, the poem would have stood
+unique in his work as a true survival of Greek subject wedded with
+classical form and style, and would certainly have challenged comparison
+with the best work done in this field by Landor or Swinburne, who tell
+over the classical stories or even invent new episodes, but, when all is
+said, do not write as if they were actually themselves Greeks.</p>
+
+<p>There is no other instance in Browning of such a survival. In his other
+poems on Greek subjects it is Browning bringing Greek life to our ken with
+wonderful distinctness, but doing it according to his own accustomed
+poetical methods, or, as in &#8220;Ixion,&#8221; a Greek story has been used as a
+symbol for the inculcating of a philosophy which is largely Browning&#8217;s
+own.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the fact that he has turned to Greece so seldom for
+inspiration, his Greek poems range from such stirring pictures of Greek
+life and feeling as one gets in the splendid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> dramatic idyl
+&#8220;Pheidippides,&#8221; based on a historical incident, through the imaginary
+&#8220;Cleon,&#8221; in which is found the sublimated essence of Greek philosophical
+thought at the time of Christ&mdash;thought, weary of law and beauty, longing
+for a fresh inspiration, knowing not what, and unable to perceive it in
+the new ideal of love being taught by the Christians&mdash;to &#8220;Aristophanes&#8217;
+Apology,&#8221; in which the Athens of his day, with its literary and political
+factions, is presented with a force and analysis which place it second
+only to &#8220;The Ring and the Book.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This poem taken, with Balaustion, gives the reader not only a
+comprehensive view of the historical atmosphere of the time but indirectly
+shows the poet&#8217;s own attitude toward the literary war between Euripides
+and Aristophanes. So different are Browning&#8217;s Greek poems from all other
+poems upon classical subjects that it will be interesting to dwell upon
+the most important of them at greater length than has been deemed
+necessary in the case of the more widely known and read of the poems.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Cleon&#8221; links itself with the nineteenth century, because of its dealing
+with the problem of immortality, a problem which has been ever present in
+the mind of the century.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> Cleon has, beside that type of synthetic mind
+which belongs to a ripe phase of civilization. Though he is a Greek and a
+pagan, he stretches hands across the centuries to men of the type of
+Morris or Matthew Arnold. He is the latest child of his own time, the heir
+of all the ages during which Greece had developed its &aelig;sthetic perfection,
+discovered the inadequacy of its established religion, come through its
+philosophers and poets to a perception of the immortality of the soul, and
+sunk again to a skepticism which had no vision of personal immortality at
+least, though among the stoics there were some who believed in an
+absorption into divine being. Cleon would fain believe in personal
+immortality but cannot, and, like Matthew Arnold, believes in facing death
+imperturbably.</p>
+
+<p>In &#8220;Balaustion&#8217;s Adventure&#8221; a historical tradition is used as the central
+episode of the poem, but life and romance are given to it by the creation
+of the heroine, Balaustion, a young Greek woman whose fascinating
+personality dominates the whole poem. She was a Rhodian, else her freedom
+of action and speech might seem too modern, but among the islands of
+Greece, at least at the time of Euripides, there still survived that
+attitude toward woman which we see reflected in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> Homeric epics. Away
+from Athens, too, Euripides was a power; hence his defence is put into the
+mouth of one not an Athenian. She had saved a shipload of Athenian
+sympathizers by reciting Euripides when they were in danger from the
+hostile Syracusans.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img14.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Euripides</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Besides the romantic touch which is given the story by the creation of the
+lyric girl, there is an especial fitness in making the enthusiastic
+devotee of this poet a woman, for no one among the ancients has so fully
+and sympathetically portrayed woman in all her human possibilities of
+goodness and badness as Euripides, yet he has been called a
+woman-hater&mdash;because some of his men have railed against women&mdash;but one
+Alkestis is enough to offset any dramatic utterances of his men about
+women. The poet&#8217;s attitude should be looked for in his power of portraying
+women of fine traits, not in any opinions expressed by his men.
+Furthermore, Browning had before him a model of Balaustion in her
+enthusiasm for Euripides, in Mrs. Browning. These circumstances are
+certainly sufficient to prove the appropriateness of making a Rhodian girl
+the defender of Euripides.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing more delicious in Browning than Balaustion&#8217;s relation of
+&#8220;Alkestis,&#8221; as she had seen it acted, to her three friends.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> Her woman&#8217;s
+comment and criticisms combine a Browning&#8217;s penetration of the fine points
+in the play with a girl&#8217;s idealism. Such a combination of masculine
+intellectualism and feminine charm has been known in women of all
+centuries. As the translation of the beautiful play of &#8220;Alkestis&#8221;
+proceeds, Balaustion interprets its art and moral, defending her favorite
+poet, not with the ponderousness of a grave critic weighing the influences
+which may have molded his genius, or calculating the pros and cons of his
+style, but with the swift appreciation of a mind and spirit full of the
+ardor of sympathy. Moreover, her talk of the play being a recollection of
+how it appeared to her as she saw it acted, the mere text is constantly
+enlarged upon and made vital with flashing glimpses of the action, as, for
+example, in the passage just after the funeral of Alkestis:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;So, to the struggle off strode Herakles,<br />
+When silence closed behind the lion-garb,<br />
+Back came our dull fact settling in its place,<br />
+Though heartiness and passion half-dispersed<br />
+The inevitable fate. And presently<br />
+In came the mourners from the funeral,<br />
+One after one, until we hoped the last<br />
+Would be Alkestis, and so end our dream.<br />
+Could they have really left Alkestis lone<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>I&#8217; the wayside sepulchre! Home, all save she!<br />
+And when Admetos felt that it was so,<br />
+By the stand-still: when he lifted head and face<br />
+From the two hiding hands and peplos&#8217; fold,<br />
+And looked forth, knew the palace, knew the hills,<br />
+Knew the plains, knew the friendly frequence there,<br />
+And no Alkestis any more again,<br />
+Why, the whole woe billow-like broke on him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Again, her criticism of Admetos gives at once the natural feeling of a
+girl who could not be satisfied with what seemed to her his selfish
+action, and Browning&#8217;s feeling that Euripides saw its selfishness just as
+surely as Balaustion, despite the fact that it was in keeping, as numerous
+critics declare, with the customs of the age, and would not by any of his
+contemporaries be regarded as selfish on his part:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;So he stood sobbing: nowise insincere,<br />
+But somehow child-like, like his children, like<br />
+Childishness the world over. What was new<br />
+In this announcement that his wife must die?<br />
+What particle of pain beyond the pact<br />
+He made with his eyes wide open, long ago&mdash;<br />
+Made and was, if not glad, content to make?<br />
+Now that the sorrow, he had called for, came,<br />
+He sorrowed to the height: none heard him say,<br />
+However, what would seem so pertinent,<br />
+&#8216;To keep this pact, I find surpass my power;<br />
+Rescind it, Moirai! Give me back her life,<br />
+And take the life I kept by base exchange!<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>Or, failing that, here stands your laughing-stock<br />
+Fooled by you, worthy just the fate o&#8217; the fool<br />
+Who makes a pother to escape the best<br />
+And gain the worst you wiser Powers allot!&#8217;<br />
+No, not one word of this; nor did his wife<br />
+Despite the sobbing, and the silence soon<br />
+To follow, judge so much was in his thought&mdash;<br />
+Fancy that, should the Moirai acquiesce,<br />
+He would relinquish life nor let her die.<br />
+The man was like some merchant who in storm,<br />
+Throws the freight over to redeem the ship;<br />
+No question, saving both were better still,<br />
+As it was,&mdash;why, he sorrowed, which sufficed.<br />
+So, all she seemed to notice in his speech<br />
+Was what concerned her children.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Among modern critics who take the conventional ground in regard to Admetos
+may be cited Churton Collins, whose opinion is, of course, weighty. He
+writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Alcestis would be considered fortunate for having had an opportunity
+of displaying so conspicuously the fidelity to a wife&#8217;s first and
+capital duty. Had Admetus prevented such a sacrifice he would have
+robbed Alcestis of an honor which every nobly ambitious woman in
+Hellas would have coveted. This is so much taken for granted by the
+poet that all that he lays stress on in the drama is the virtue
+rewarded by the return of Alcestis to life, the virtue characteristic
+of Admetus, the virtue of hospitality; to this duty in all the agony
+of his sorrow Admetus had been nobly true, and as a reward for what he
+had thus earned, the wife who had been equally true to woman&#8217;s
+obligations was restored all-glorified to home and children and mutual
+love.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>Most readers, however, will find it difficult to put themselves into the
+appropriate Greek frame of mind, and will sympathize with Browning&#8217;s
+supposition that after all Euripides had transcended current ideas on the
+subject and deliberately intended to convey such an interpretation of the
+character of Admetos as Balaustion gives.</p>
+
+<p>Balaustion shows her penetration again in her appreciation of Herakles. He
+distinguishes clearly between evil that is inherent in the nature as the
+selfishness of Admetos, and evil which is more or less external, growing
+out of conditions incident to the time rather than from any real trait of
+nature. Herakles&#8217; delight in the hospitality accorded him, his drinking
+and feasting in the interim of his labors, did not touch the genuine,
+large-hearted helpfulness of the demigod, who became sober the moment he
+learned there was sorrow in the house and need of his aid.</p>
+
+<p>In her proposed version of the story, Balaustion is surely the romantic
+girl, who would have her hero a hero indeed and in every way the equal of
+his spouse. Yet if we delve below this romanticism of Balaustion we shall
+find the poet&#8217;s own belief in the almost omniscient power of human love
+the basis of the relation between Admetos and Alkestis.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>The soul of Alkestis in one look entered into that of Admetos; she died,
+but he is entirely guiltless of agreeing to her death. Alkestis herself
+had made the pact with Apollo to die for her husband. He, when he learns
+it, refuses to accept the sacrifice, and unable to persuade him that his
+duty to humanity demands that he accept it, Alkestis asks him to look at
+her. Then her soul enters his, but when she goes to Hades and demands to
+become a ghost, the Queen of Hades replies:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Hence, thou deceiver! This is not to die,<br />
+If, by the very death which mocks me now,<br />
+The life, that&#8217;s left behind and past my power,<br />
+Is formidably doubled&mdash;Say, there fight<br />
+Two athletes, side by side, each athlete armed<br />
+With only half the weapons, and no more,<br />
+Adequate to a contest with their foes.<br />
+If one of these should fling helm, sword and shield<br />
+To fellow&mdash;shieldless, swordless, helmless late&mdash;<br />
+And so leap naked o&#8217;er the barrier, leave<br />
+A combatant equipped from head to heel,<br />
+Yet cry to the other side, &#8216;Receive a friend<br />
+Who fights no longer!&#8217; &#8216;Back, friend, to the fray!&#8217;<br />
+Would be the prompt rebuff; I echo it.<br />
+Two souls in one were formidable odds:<br />
+Admetos must not be himself and thou!<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;And so, before the embrace relaxed a whit,<br />
+The lost eyes opened, still beneath the look;<br />
+And lo, Alkestis was alive again,<br />
+And of Admetos&#8217; rapture who shall speak?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>How unique a treatment of a classical subject this poem is, is
+self-evident. Not content with making a superb translation of the play,
+remarkable both for its literalness and for its poetic beauty, the poet
+has dared to present that translation indirectly through the mouth of
+another speaker, and to incorporate with it a running commentary of
+criticism in blank verse. Still more daring was it to make play and
+criticism an episode in a dramatic monologue in which we learn not only
+the story of the rescue of the shipload of Athenian sympathizers, but the
+story of Balaustion&#8217;s love. Along with all this complexity of interest
+there is still room for a lifelike portrayal of Balaustion herself, one of
+the loveliest conceptions of womanhood in literature.</p>
+
+<p>To reiterate what I have upon another occasion expressed in regard to her,
+she is a girl about whom the fancy loves to cling&mdash;she is so joyous, so
+brave, and so beautiful, and possessed of so rare a mind scintillating
+with wit, wisdom and critical insight, not Browning&#8217;s own mind either
+except in so far as his sympathies were with Euripides. Her ardor for
+purity and perfection is perhaps peculiarly feminine. It is quite
+different from that of the mind tormented by the problem of evil and
+taking refuge in a partisanship of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> evil as a force which works for good
+and without which the world would be a waste of insipidity. Her suggested
+version of the Alkestis story converts Admetos into as much of a saint as
+Alkestis, and makes an exquisite and soul-stirring romance of their
+perfect union, though it must be admitted that it would do away with all
+the intensity and dramatic force of the play as it is presented by
+Euripides. Like the angels who rejoice more over one sinner returned than
+over the ninety and nine that did not go astray, an artist prefers the
+contrast and movement of a sinning and regenerated Admetos to an Admetos
+more suited from the first to be the consort of Alkestis. This is the
+touch, however, which preserves Balaustion&#8217;s feminine charm and makes her
+truly her own self&mdash;an ardent soul very far from being simply Browning&#8217;s
+mouthpiece.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aristophanes&#8217; Apology&#8221; is a still more remarkable play in its complexity.
+Again, Balaustion is the speaker, and Browning has set himself the task in
+this monologue of relating the fall of Athens, of presenting the
+personality of Aristophanes, of defending Euripides, a translation of
+whose play, &#8220;Herakles,&#8221; is included, and incidentally sketching the
+history of Greek comedy, all through the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> mouth of the one speaker,
+Balaustion. Not until one has grasped the law by which the poet has
+accomplished this, and has moreover freshly in his mind the facts of Greek
+history at the time of Athens&#8217; fall, and Greek literature, especially the
+plays of Aristophanes and Euripides, can the poem be thoroughly enjoyed.</p>
+
+<p>In the very first line the suggestion of the scene setting is given, and
+such suggestions occur from time to time all through the poem. It should
+be observed that they are never brought in for themselves alone, but are
+always used in connection with some mood of Balaustion&#8217;s or as imagery in
+relation to some thought. While the reader is thus kept conscious of the
+background of wind and wave, as Balaustion and her husband voyage toward
+Rhodes, it is not until the end of the poem that we learn with a pleasant
+surprise that the boat on which they are sailing is the same one saved
+once by Balaustion when she recited Euripides&#8217; &#8220;sweetest, saddest song.&#8221;
+Thus there is a dramatic denouement in connection with the scene setting.</p>
+
+<p>Through the expression of a mood of despair on the part of Balaustion at
+the opening of the poem the reader is put in possession not only of the
+scene setting but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> of the occasion of the voyage, which is the overthrow
+of Athens. From the mood of despair Balaustion passes to one in which she
+describes how she could better have borne to see Athens perish. This
+carries her on to a more hopeful frame of mind, in which she can foresee
+the spiritual influence of Athens persisting. The peace of mind ensuing
+upon this consideration makes it possible for her calmly to survey the
+events connected with its downfall, among which the picturesque episode of
+the dancing of the flute girls to the demolition of the walls of the
+Pir&aelig;us is conspicuous. She then sees the vision of the immortal Athens
+while Sparta the victorious in arms will die. Then comes a mood in which
+she declares it will be better to face the grief than to brood over it,
+which leads to her proposing to Euthukles that they treat the fall of
+Athens as a tragic theme, as the poet might do, and enact it on the
+voyage. Then grief over the recent events takes possession of her again,
+and now with the feminine privilege of changing her mind, she thinks it
+would be better to rehearse an event which happened to herself a year ago
+as a prologue. Speaking of adventures causes her very naturally to drop
+into reminiscences about her first adventure, when she recited
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>Euripides and met the man who was to become her husband.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img15.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Aristophanes</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Thus, through this perfectly natural transition from one mood to another,
+Balaustion leads up to the real subject-matter of the poem, Aristophanes&#8217;
+defence of himself, which, however, is preceded by an account of the
+effect of the death of Euripides upon the Athenians as witnessed by
+Euthukles, his death being the occasion of Aristophanes&#8217; call on
+Balaustion. What she calls the prologue is really the main theme of the
+poem, while all her talk up to this point is truly the prologue. The
+actual account of the fall of Athens does not come until the conclusion,
+and is related in comparatively few words.</p>
+
+<p>What seems, then, to be the chief theme of the poem with its setting of
+wind and wave and bark bears somewhat the same relation to the real theme
+as incidental music does to a play. Upon first thoughts it may seem like a
+clumsy contrivance for introducing Aristophanes upon the scene, but in the
+end it will be perceived, I think, that it serves the artistic purpose of
+placing Aristophanes in proper perspective. Balaustion with her
+exquisitely human moods and progressive spirit forms the right complement
+to the decaying ideals of Aristophanes, and gives him the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> proper flavor
+of antiquity. Instead of seeing him in the broad light of a direct
+dramatic presentation we see him indirectly through Balaustion&#8217;s thoughts
+and moods, who, though permitting him to do full justice to himself, yet
+surrounds him all the time with the subtle influence of her sympathy for
+Euripides.</p>
+
+<p>As the better way to follow the development of the preliminary part of the
+poem is by regarding every step as the outcome of a mood on the part of
+Balaustion, so the better way of following Aristophanes through what seems
+his interminable defence of himself is again by tracing the moods through
+which his arguments express themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Aristophanes comes in half drunk to make his call on Balaustion, and his
+first mood is one of graciousness toward her whose beauty has impressed
+his artistic perceptions, but noticing her dignity and its effect in
+routing the chorus, he immediately begins to be on the defensive. The
+disappearance of his chorus, however, takes him off on a little excursion
+about the moves which are being made by the city to cut down the expense
+of dramatic performances by curtailing the chorus. In a spirit of bravado
+he declares that he does not care so long as he has his actors left. A
+coarse reference causes Balaustion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> to turn and he changes his mood. He
+acknowledges he is drunk and rushes off into a defence of drunkenness in
+general for playwrights and for himself, which on this occasion came about
+on account of the supper he and his players have attended. He rattles on
+about the supper, telling how the merriment increased until something
+happened. The thought of this something changes his mood completely.
+Balaustion notices it, he reads her expression, and characteristically
+explains the change in himself as due to her fixed regard. The reader is
+left in suspense as to the something which happened, yet it haunts the
+memory, and he feels convinced that some time he is to know what it was.</p>
+
+<p>Now Aristophanes bids Balaustion speak to him without fear. She does so,
+conveying in her welcome both her disapproval and her admiration.
+Aristophanes, evidently piqued, does not answer, but makes personal
+remarks upon the manner of her speech, asking her if she learned tragedy
+from <i>him</i>&mdash;Euripides. This starts him off on dreams of a new comedy in
+which women shall act, but he concludes that his mission is to ornament
+comedy as he finds it, not invent a new comedy.</p>
+
+<p>This gives Balaustion a chance to ask if in his last play, later than the
+one Euthukles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> had seen, he had smoothed this ancient club of comedy he
+speaks of into a more human and less brutal implement of warfare, and was
+it a conviction of this new method he might use in comedy which was the
+something that happened at the feast. Aristophanes, as usual when he is
+cornered, makes no direct reply, but asks if Euthukles saw his last play,
+to which Balaustion frankly replies that having seen the first he never
+cared to see the following. Aristophanes avows he can show cause why he
+wrote them, but glances off in a sarcastic reference to Euripides, whose
+art he says belongs to the closet or the cave, not to the world. He
+prefers to stick to the old forms of art and make Athens happy in what
+coarse way she desires. He then proceeds to enlarge upon what that is.
+Then he changes again and asks with various excursions into side issues
+(for example: the rise of comedy; how it is now being regarded by the
+government, which favors tragedy, giving him another chance for a dig at
+Euripides) if he is the man likely to be satisfied to be classed merely a
+comic poet since he wrote the &#8220;Birds?&#8221; Balaustion encourages him a little
+here, and, cheered up, he goes on to tell how he gave the people draught
+divine in &#8220;Wasps&#8221; and &#8220;Grasshoppers,&#8221; and how<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> he praised peace by
+showing the kind of pleasures one may have when peace reigns&mdash;and still at
+every opportunity casting slurs at the tragic muse, especially Euripides.</p>
+
+<p>He goes on describing his play until he touches on some of the sarcasms
+which make Balaustion wince.</p>
+
+<p>Then he turns about and declares he loathes as much as she does the things
+of which he tells, but his attempts at bringing comedy up to a high level
+having failed, he is obliged to give the Athenians what they want, a
+smartened up version of the &#8220;Thesmaphoriazousai,&#8221; which had failed the
+year before. He describes his triumph with this which was being celebrated
+at the supper when the something happened which is now at last
+described&mdash;namely, the entrance of Sophocles, who announces that he
+intends to commemorate the death of Euripides by having his chorus clothed
+in black and ungarlanded at the performance of his play next month.</p>
+
+<p>This startling scene, being prepared for and not brought in until
+Aristophanes has done much talking, seems to throw a sudden flash of
+reality into the poem. Ill-natured criticism, Aristophanes shows, follows
+on the part of the feasters, though Aristophanes&#8217;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> mood is one of sudden
+recognition of the value of Euripides. But when he, sobered for the time
+being, proposes a toast to the Tragic Muse, the feasters consider it a
+joke. He quickly accepts the situation, and comes off triumphant by
+proposing a toast to both muses.</p>
+
+<p>After this Balaustion asks Aristophanes if he will commemorate Euripides
+with them. But his sober mood is gone. He looks about the room, sees
+things that belong to Euripides, and immediately begins stabbing at him.
+Balaustion objects, and upon the theme of respect to the dead he begins
+his usual invective against his rivals, but finally ends by giving respect
+to Euripides, him whose serenity, he declares, could never with his gibes
+be disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>After venting this mood of animosity he begins soberly to discuss the
+origin of comedy. He traces its growth to the point where he found it, and
+enlarges on the improvements he has made, touching, as always, upon the
+criticisms of his opposers, and finally arriving at the chief point of
+difference between himself and Euripides, which he enlarges upon at great
+length. Here the incidental music breaks in with talk between Balaustion
+and Euthukles, in which the former rather tries<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> to excuse herself from
+relating her reply to Aristophanes.</p>
+
+<p>However, she does give her reply, which is conducted in a more truly
+argumentative fashion than the defence of Aristophanes. She picks up his
+points and makes her points against him usually by denying the truth of
+what he has said. Her supreme defence is, however, the reading of the play
+&#8220;Herakles.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Aristophanes, touched but not convinced, finally insists that he is
+Athens&#8217; best friend. He is no Thamuris to be punished for seeing beyond
+human vision. The last characteristic touch is when Aristophanes catches
+up the psalterion and sings the lyric of Thamuris. Then he departs, and
+Balaustion rehearses the last days of Athens, with Euthukles&#8217; part in
+delaying the tragedy of the doomed city.</p>
+
+<p>By threading one&#8217;s way thus through the apology, not from the point of
+view of Aristophanes&#8217; arguments, but from the point of view of his moods,
+one experiences a tremendous sense of the personality of the man.
+Repetitions which are not required for the full presentation of his case
+take their place as natural to a man who is not only inordinately vain but
+is immediately swayed by every suggestion and emotion that comes to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> him.
+Owing to his volatile temperament the argument is varied by now a bit of
+vivid description like that of the archon&#8217;s feast when Sophocles appeared,
+now by some merely personal remark to Balaustion.</p>
+
+<p>The criticism in this play, as in that of &#8220;Balaustion&#8217;s Adventure,&#8221; may be
+considered either as representing some phase of contemporary opinion about
+Aristophanes or as expressing the opinion of the poet himself.
+Balaustion&#8217;s indignation is especially aroused by the two plays, &#8220;The
+Lusistrata&#8221; and the &#8220;Thesmophoriazousai,&#8221; both of which she finds utterly
+detestable. It is interesting to compare with this entirely unfavorable
+criticism the feeling of such distinguished classical scholars as Gilbert
+Murray and J. A. Symonds. The first Murray describes as a play &#8220;full of
+daring indecency, it is true, but the curious thing is that Aristophanes,
+while professing to ridicule the women, is all through on their side. The
+jokes made by the superior sex at the expense of the inferior&mdash;to give
+them their Roman names&mdash;are seldom remarkable either for generosity or
+refinement, and it is our author&#8217;s pleasant humor to accuse everybody of
+every vice he can think of at the moment. Yet with the single exception
+that he credits women with an inordinate fondness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> for wine parties&mdash;the
+equivalent it would seem of afternoon tea&mdash;he makes them on the whole
+perceptibly more sensible and more sympathetic than his men.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Of the second play Symonds speaks with actual enthusiasm. &#8220;It has a
+regular plot&mdash;an intrigue and a solution&mdash;and its persons are not
+allegorical but real. Thus it approaches the standard of modern comedy.
+But the plot, though gigantic in its scale, and prodigious in its wealth
+of wit and satire, is farcical. The artifices by which Euripides endeavors
+to win Agathon to undertake his cause, the disguise of Muesilochus in
+female attire, the oratory of the old man against the women in the midst
+of their assembly, his detection, the momentary suspension of the dramatic
+action by his seizure of the supposed baby, his slaughter of the swaddled
+wine jar, his apprehension by Cleisthenes, the devices and disguises by
+which Euripides endeavors to extricate his father-in-law from the scrape,
+and the final <i>ruse</i> by which he eludes the Scythian bowmen, and carries
+off Muesilochus in triumph&mdash;all these form a series of highly diverting
+comic scenes.&#8221; Again, &#8220;There is no passage in Aristophanes more amusing
+than the harangue of Muesilochus. The portrait, too, of Agathon in the act
+of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>composition is exquisitely comic. But the crowning sport of the
+&#8216;Thesmophoriazousai&#8217; is in the last scene when Muesilochus adapts the
+Palamedes and the Helen of Euripides to his own forlorn condition,
+jumbling up the well-known verses of these tragedies with coarse-flavored,
+rustical remarks; and when at last Euripides, himself, acts Echo and
+Perseus to the Andromeda of his father-in-law, and both together mystify
+the policeman by their ludicrous utterance of antiphonal lamentation.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In her welcome of him, Balaustion expresses rather what she thinks he
+might be than what she really thinks he is. She welcomes him:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Good Genius! Glory of the poet, glow<br />
+O&#8217; the humorist who castigates his kind,<br />
+Suave summer-lightning lambency which plays<br />
+On stag-horned tree, misshapen crag askew,<br />
+Then vanishes with unvindictive smile<br />
+After a moment&#8217;s laying black earth bare.<br />
+Splendor of wit that springs a thunder ball&mdash;<br />
+Satire&mdash;to burn and purify the world,<br />
+True aim, fair purpose: just wit justly strikes<br />
+Injustice,&mdash;right, as rightly quells the wrong,<br />
+Finds out in knaves&#8217;, fools&#8217;, cowards&#8217;, armory<br />
+The tricky tinselled place fire flashes through.<br />
+No damage else, sagacious of true ore;<br />
+Wit learned in the laurel, leaves each wreath<br />
+O&#8217;er lyric shell or tragic barbiton,&mdash;<br />
+Though alien gauds be singed,&mdash;undesecrate.&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>Her attitude here is very like that of criticism in general, except that
+she is more or less sarcastic, meaning to imply that such Aristophanes
+might be but is not. Symonds, on the other hand, thinks him really what
+Balaustion thinks he might be.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If,&#8221; he says, &#8220;Coleridge was justified in claiming the German word
+Lustspiel for the so-called comedies of Shakespeare, we have a far greater
+right to appropriate this wide and pregnant title to the plays of
+Aristophanes. The brazen mask which crowns his theatre smiles indeed
+broadly, serenely, as if its mirth embraced the universe; but its hollow
+eye-sockets suggest infinite possibilities of profoundest irony.
+Buffoonery carried to the point of paradox, wisdom disguised as insanity,
+and gaiety concealing the whole sum of human disappointment, sorrow and
+disgust, seem ready to escape from its open but rigid lips, which are
+molded to a proud perpetual laughter. It is a laughter which spares
+neither God nor man&mdash;which climbs Olympus only to drag down the immortals
+to its scorn, and trails the pall of august humanity in the mire; but
+which, amid its mockery and blasphemy, seems everlastingly asserting, as
+by paradox, that reverence of the soul which bends our knees to heaven and
+makes us respect our brothers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>One cannot help feeling, in view of these very diverse opinions, that both
+are exaggerated. The enthusiasm of Symonds seems almost fanatic. Though no
+one of penetration can fail to see the wit and wisdom, and at times, in
+such lyrics as those in &#8220;The Clouds,&#8221; the poetic charm of Aristophanes,
+the person of fastidious taste, whether a Greek girl of his own day, or a
+man of these latter days, must sometimes feel that his buffoonery
+oversteps the bounds of true wit, even when it is not shadowed by a
+coarseness not to be borne at the present day. When Balaustion asks him
+&#8220;in plain words,&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Have you exchanged brute blows, which teach the brute<br />
+Man may surpass him in brutality,&mdash;<br />
+For human fighting, or true god-like force<br />
+Which breeds persuasion nor needs fight at all?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Aristophanes replies that it had not been his intention to turn art&#8217;s
+fabric upside down and invent an entirely new species of comedy. That sort
+of thing can be done by one who has turned his back on life, friendly
+faces, sympathetic cheer, as Euripides had done in his Salaminian cave.</p>
+
+<p>This may be regarded, on the whole, as a good bit of defence on
+Aristophanes&#8217; part. It is equivalent to his saying that there was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> no use
+in his trying to be anything for which his genius had not fitted him. This
+chimes in, again, with such authoritative criticism as Murray&#8217;s, who
+declares: &#8220;The general value of his view of life, and, above all, his
+treatment of his opponent&#8217;s alleged vices, may well be questioned. Yet
+admitting that he often opposed what was best in his age, or advocated it
+on the lowest grounds, admitting that his slanders are beyond description
+and that, as a rule, he only attacks the poor and the leaders of the poor,
+nevertheless he does it all with such exhuberant high spirits, such an air
+of its all being nonsense together, such insight and swiftness, such
+incomparable directness and charm of style, that even if some Archelaus
+had handed him over to Euripides to scourge, he would probably have
+escaped his well-earned whipping.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Much of Aristophanes&#8217; defence consists in slurring at Euripides, against
+whom he waxes more and more fierce as he goes on. His plays furnish
+numerous illustrations of his rivalry with Euripides, yet curiously
+enough, as critics have pointed out, Aristophanes imitates Euripides to a
+noteworthy extent, so much so that the dramatist Cratinus invented a word
+to describe the style of the two&mdash;Euripid-Aristophanize. Judging from his
+parodies on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> Euripides, he must certainly have read and reread his plays
+until he knew them practically by heart.</p>
+
+<p>Balaustion, as Browning has portrayed her in this poem, is the lyric girl
+developed into splendid womanhood. She has a large heart and a large
+brain, as well as imagination and strong ethical fervor. Her intense
+feeling at the fall of Athens, which had been the ideal to her of
+greatness, and her reverential love for Euripides, her charity toward
+Aristophanes the man, if not toward his work, show how deep and
+far-reaching her sympathies were. Again, her imagination flashes forth in
+her picturesque descriptions of the ruined Athens and her prophetic
+picture of the new Athens, of the spirit which will arise in its place, in
+her telling portraiture of Aristophanes and his entrance into her house,
+as well as in many another passage. Her intellect shines out in her clever
+management of the argument with Aristophanes, and her ethical fervor in
+her denunciations of the moral depravity of certain of the plays.</p>
+
+<p>As to the question of whether a young Greek woman would be likely to
+criticise Aristophanes in this way, opinion certainly differs. History is,
+for the most part, silent about women. As Mahaffy says, it is only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> in the
+dramatists and the philosophers that we can get any glimpses of the woman
+of the time.</p>
+
+<p>Mahaffy&#8217;s opinions are worth quoting as an example of the pessimism
+growing out of a bias in favor of a particular type of woman which he
+idealized in his own mind. He seems utterly incapable of appreciating the
+humanness of the women in the Greek dramatists, especially those in
+Euripides. &#8220;Sadder than the condition of the aged was that of women,&#8221; he
+writes, &#8220;at this remarkable period. The days of the noble and
+high-principled Penelope, of the refined and intellectual Helen, of the
+innocent and spirited Nausikaa, of the gentle and patient Andromache, had
+passed away. Men no longer sought and respected the society of the gentler
+sex. Would that Euripides had even been familiar, as Homer was, with the
+sound of women brawling in the streets! For in these days they were
+confined to Asiatic silence and seclusion, while the whole life of the
+men, both in business and recreation, was essentially public. Just as the
+feverish excitement of political life nowadays prompts men to spend even
+their leisure in the clubs, where they meet companions of like passions
+and interests with themselves, so the Athenian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> gentleman only came home
+to eat and sleep. His leisure as well as his business kept him in the
+market place. His wife and daughters, ignorant of philosophy and politics,
+were strangers to his real life, and took no interest in his pursuits.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The results were fatal to Athenian society. The women, uninstructed,
+neglected, and enslaved, soon punished their oppressors with their own
+keen and bitter weapons, and with none keener than their vices. For, of
+course, all the grace and delicacy of female character disappeared.
+Intellectual power in women was distinctly associated with moral
+depravity, so that excessive ignorance and stupidity was considered the
+only guarantee of virtue. The qualifications for society became
+incompatible with the qualifications for home duties, so that the outcasts
+from society, as we call them, were not the immoral and the profligate but
+the honorable and the virtuous.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Such is the view to be gleaned from history, and in Mahaffy&#8217;s opinion the
+literature of the time tells the same story. He goes on: &#8220;When we consult
+the literature of the day, we find women treated either with contemptuous
+ridicule in comedy, or with still more contemptuous silence in history. In
+tragedy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> or in the social theories of the philosophers alone can we hope
+for a glimpse into the average character and position of Athenian women.
+Here at least we might have expected that the portraits drawn with such
+consummate skill by Homer would have been easily transferred to the
+Athenian stage. But to our astonishment we find the higher social feelings
+toward women so weak that the Athenian tragic poets seem quite unable to
+appreciate, or even to understand, the more delicate features in Homeric
+characters. They are painted so coarsely and ignorantly by Euripides that
+we should never recognize them but for their names. Base motives and
+unseemly wrangling take the place of chivalrous honor and graceful
+politeness.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But the critics of the day complained that Euripides degraded the ideal
+character of tragedy by painting human nature as he found it: in fact as
+it was, and not as it ought to be. Let us turn, then, to Sophokles, who
+painted the most ideal women which the imagination of a refined Athenian
+could conceive, and consider his most celebrated characters, his Antigone
+and his Elektra. A calm, dispassionate survey will, I think, pronounce
+them harsh and masculine. They act rightly, no doubt, and even nobly, but
+they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> do it in the most disagreeable way. Except in their external
+circumstances they differ in no respect from men.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, the opinion expressed of the women of Euripides is tainted by
+the feeling that they ought to act like English matrons and their
+daughters.</p>
+
+<p>Quite a different impression is given by Symonds, who, in regard to some
+of the sentences occurring in Euripides which are uncomplimentary to
+women, says: &#8220;It is impossible to weigh occasional sententious sarcasms
+against such careful studies of heroic virtue in women as the Iphigenia,
+the Elektra, the Polyxena, the Alkestis.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But the complete vindication of the fact that Balaustion and Mrs. Browning
+and our own women of to-day are on the right side in their appreciation of
+Euripides as the great woman&#8217;s poet of antiquity is found in the opinion
+of our contemporary critic, Gilbert Murray, who more than thirty years
+after these poems were written writes of the &#8220;wonderful women-studies by
+which Euripides dazzled and aggrieved his contemporaries. They called him
+a hater of women; and Aristophanes makes the women of Athens conspire for
+revenge against him. Of course he was really the reverse. He loved and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>
+studied and expressed the women whom the Socratics ignored and Pericles
+advised to stay in their rooms. Crime, however, is always more striking
+and palpable than virtue. Heroines like Medea, Phaedra, Stheneboia,
+A&euml;rope, Clytemnestra, perhaps fill the imagination more than those of the
+angelic or devoted type&mdash;Alcestis, who died to save her husband, Evadne
+and Laodamia, who could not survive theirs, and all the great list of
+virgin-martyrs. But the significant fact is that, like Ibsen, Euripides
+refuses to idealize any man, and does idealize women. There is one
+youth-martyr, Menoikeus in the &#8216;Ph&aelig;nissae,&#8217; but his martyrdom is a
+masculine, businesslike performance&mdash;he gets rid of his prosaic father by
+a pretext about traveling money without that shimmer of loveliness that
+hangs over the virgins.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Where then did Euripides find these splendid women of force and character?
+It seems quite impossible that he could have evolved them out of his own
+inner consciousness. He must have known women who served at least, in
+part, as models. Besides, there was undoubtedly a new woman movement in
+the air or Plato in his &#8220;Republic&#8221; would not have suggested a plan for
+educating men and women alike. The free women of Athens<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> are known in some
+cases to have attained a high degree of culture. Aspasia, who became the
+wife of Pericles, is a shining example. There was Sappho, also, with her
+school of poetry attended by girls in Lesbos.</p>
+
+<p>Taking all these facts into consideration, it would seem that Browning was
+sufficiently justified in drawing such a woman as Balaustion, and that a
+woman of her penetrating intellect and ardor of spirit would love
+Euripides, and dislike Aristophanes, seems absolutely certain.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, if the historical attitude is taken toward Balaustion and her
+criticism and appreciation, it can be on the whole accepted as reflecting
+what would probably be the feeling of an ardent woman-follower of
+Euripides in his own day.</p>
+
+<p>But, on the other hand, if the criticism be taken as Browning&#8217;s own, it is
+open to question whether it is partisan rather than entirely broad-minded.
+Take the consensus of opinion of modern critics and we find them all
+agreed in regard to the genius of Aristophanes, though admitting that his
+coarseness must, at times, detract from their enjoyment of him.</p>
+
+<p>There is much truth in Symonds&#8217; criticism of the poem. He says of it: &#8220;As
+a sophist and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> a rhetorician of poetry, Mr. Browning proves himself
+unrivaled, and takes rank with the best writers of historical romances.
+Yet students may fairly accuse him of some special pleading in favor of
+his friends and against his foes. It is true that Aristophanes did not
+bring back again the golden days of Greece; true that his comedy revealed
+a corruption latent in Athenian life. But neither was Euripides in any
+sense a savior. Impartiality regards them both as equally destructive:
+Aristophanes, because he indulged animalism and praised ignorance in an
+age which ought to have outgrown both; Euripides, because he criticised
+the whole fabric of Greek thought and feeling in an age which had not yet
+distinguished between analysis and skepticism.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What has just been said about Mr. Browning&#8217;s special pleading indicates
+the chief fault to be found with his poem. The point of view is modern.
+The situation is strained. Aristophanes becomes the scapegoat of Athenian
+sins, while Euripides shines forth a saint as well as a sage. Balaustion,
+for her part, beautiful as her conception truly is, takes up a position
+which even Plato could not have assumed. Into her mouth Mr. Browning has
+put the views of the most searching and most sympathetic modern<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> analyst.
+She judges Euripides not as he appeared to his own Greeks, but as he
+strikes the warmest of his admirers, who compare his work with that of all
+the poets who have ever lived.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It would seem that Mr. Symonds, himself, does some special pleading here.
+As we have seen, Euripides, though not a favorite in Athens, did have warm
+admirers in his own day; consequently there is nothing out of the way in
+portraying one of his contemporaries as an admirer. Furthermore,
+Balaustion does not represent him as a savior of his age. She sees only
+too clearly that in the narrow sense of convincing his age he has not been
+a success. What is her vision of the spiritual Athens which is to arise
+but a confession of this fact! Nor is it entirely improbable that she
+might be prophetic of a time when Euripides will be recognized as the true
+power. Any disciple of a poet ahead of his time perceives these things.
+One should be careful in judging of the poem as good modern criticism not
+to be entirely guided by the opinions of Balaustion. It should never be
+forgotten that it is a dramatic poem in which Aristophanes is allowed to
+speak for himself at great length, and whatever can be accepted as good
+argument for himself upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> his own ground should be set over against the
+sweeping strictures of Balaustion. Indeed it may turn out that Browning
+has, after all, said for him the most exculpatory word of any critic, for
+he has so presented his case as to show that he considers him the outcome
+of the undeveloped phase of morals then existing for which he is hardly
+responsible because the higher light has not yet broken in upon him. This
+is evidenced especially in the strange combination in him of a frank
+belief in a life of the senses which goes along with a puritanical
+reverence for the gods, and a hatred of anything that falls within his own
+definition of vice.</p>
+
+<p>To sum up, if I may again be forgiven for re-expressing an opinion
+elsewhere printed, which states as clearly as I am able to do my
+conviction of where the play stands as criticism, like all dramatic work,
+this poem aims to present the actual spirit of the time in which the
+actors moved upon the stage of life, and to reproduce something of their
+mental and emotional natures. Any criticism of the poets who figure in the
+poem, or of the larger question of the quarrel between tragedy and comedy,
+should be deduced indirectly, as implied in the sympathetic presentation
+of both sides, not based exclusively upon direct<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> expressions of opinion
+on either side. So regarded it would seem that Browning was able to
+appreciate the genius of Aristophanes as well as that of Euripides, but
+that he considered Aristophanes to have value chiefly in relation to his
+age, as the artistic mouthpiece of its long-established usages, while
+Euripides had caught the breath of the future, and was the mirror of the
+prophetic impulses of his age rather than of its dominant civilization.</p>
+
+<p>It is not improbable that Landor&#8217;s fascinating portrayal of the brilliant
+Aspasia may have had some influence upon Browning&#8217;s conception of
+Balaustion, upon the intellectual side at least. Alcibiades says that many
+people think her language as pure and elegant as Pericles, and Pericles
+says she was never seen out of temper or forgetful of what argument to
+urge first and most forcibly. When all is said, however, it may be that
+the &#8220;halo irised around&#8221; Balaustion&#8217;s head was due, more than to any one
+else, to the influence of the memory of Mrs. Browning, of whom she is made
+to say with a sublime disregard of its anachronism:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;I know the poetess who graved in gold,<br />
+Among her glories that shall never fade,<br />
+This style and title for Euripides,<br />
+<i>The Human with his droppings of warm tears</i>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>After such a study of Greek life as this, wherein every available incident
+in history, every episode in the plays of Aristophanes bearing on the
+subject, every contemporary allusion are all woven together with such
+consummate skill that the very soul and body of the time is imaged forth,
+the classical poems of the other great names of the century seem almost
+like child&#8217;s play. Landor&#8217;s poems on Greek subjects sound like imitations
+in inferior material of antiquity. Arnold&#8217;s are even duller. Swinburne
+tells his Greek tales in an endless flow of rhythmical, musical verse,
+which occasionally rises into the realm of having something to say. Morris
+tells his at equal length in a manner suggestive of Chaucer without
+Chaucer&#8217;s snap, but where among them all is there such a bit of stinging
+life as in &#8220;Pheidippedes&#8221; or &#8220;Echetlos?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img16.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Walter Savage Landor</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Tennyson has, it is true, written some altogether exquisite verse, upon
+classical themes, and in every case the poems are not descriptive nor
+dramatic, but are dramatic soliloquies, thus approaching in form
+Browning&#8217;s dramatic idyls. One of the most beautiful of these is
+&#8220;&OElig;none.&#8221; There we have a mere tradition enlarged upon and the feelings
+of &OElig;none upon the desertion of Paris expressed with a richness of
+emotional fervor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> in a setting of appropriate nature imagery which carries
+us back to the idyls of Theocritus. &#8220;Ulysses,&#8221; again gives the psychology
+of a wanderer who has become so habituated to adventures that he is quite
+incapable of settling down with Penelope for the remainder of his life.
+One cannot quite forgive the poet for calling the ever youthful and
+beautiful Penelope, whose hand was sought by so many suitors, and who,
+although twenty years had passed, might still be quite young, an &#8220;aged
+wife.&#8221; It has always seemed to the writer like a wholly unnecessary stab
+at a very beautiful story, and the poem would have been just as effective
+if Ulysses&#8217; hunger for lands beyond the sun had not been coupled with any
+scorn of Penelope, but with a feeling of pain that again Fate must take
+him away from her. Aside from this note of bad taste&mdash;bad, because it
+shadows a picture of faithfulness, cherished as an almost universal
+possession of humanity&mdash;the poem is fine. There is also, though not Greek,
+the remarkable study of Lucretius going mad from the effects of his wife&#8217;s
+love philter, in which the most fascinating glimpses of his philosophy of
+atoms are caught amid his maniacal wanderings, and, last, the very
+beautiful Demeter and Persephone.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>These are as unique in their way as Browning&#8217;s Greek poems are in theirs,
+standing quite apart from such work as Morris&#8217;, or Swinburne&#8217;s, not only
+because of their haunting music, which even Swinburne cannot equal, but
+because of a deeper vein of thought running through them. As far as
+thought is concerned, however, all pale in significance the moment they
+are placed in juxtaposition with any of Browning&#8217;s classical productions.</p>
+
+<p>Not the least interesting of Browning&#8217;s classical poems is &#8220;Ixion.&#8221; In his
+treatment of the myth of Ixion he proves himself a true child of the
+Greeks, not that he makes any slavish attempt to reproduce a Greek
+atmosphere as it existed in the lifetime of Greek poetry, but he exercises
+that prerogative which the Greek poets always claimed, of interpreting a
+myth to suit their own ends.</p>
+
+<p>It has become a sort of critical axiom to compare Browning&#8217;s &#8220;Ixion&#8221; with
+the &#8220;Prometheus&#8221; of literature. This is one of those catching analogies
+which lay hold upon the mind, and cannot be shaken off again without
+considerable difficulty. Mr. Arthur Symons first spoke of the resemblance;
+and almost every other critic with the exception of Mr. Nettleship has
+dwelt mainly upon that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> aspect of the poem which bears out the comparison.
+But why, it might very well be asked, did Browning, if he intended to make
+another Prometheus, choose Ixion for his theme? And the answer is evident,
+because in the story of Ixion he found some quality different from any
+which existed in the story of Prometheus, and which was especially suited
+to the end he had in view.</p>
+
+<p>The kernel of the myth of Prometheus as developed by &AElig;schylus is proud,
+unflinching suffering of punishment, inflicted, not by a god justly angry
+for sin against himself, but by a god sternly mindful of his own
+prerogatives, whose only right is might, and jealous of any interference
+in behalf of the race which he detested&mdash;the race of man. Thus Prometheus
+stands out as a hero in Greek mythology, a mediator between man and the
+blind anger of a god of unconditional power; and Prometheus, with an
+equally blind belief in Fate, accepts while he defies the punishment
+inflicted by Zeus. He tacitly acknowledges the right of Zeus to punish
+him, since he confesses his deeds to be sins, but, nevertheless, he would
+do exactly the same thing over again:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">&#8220;By my choice, my choice</span><br />
+I freely sinned&mdash;I will confess my sin&mdash;<br />
+And helping mortals found mine own despair.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>On the other hand, Ixion never appears in classic lore as a hero. He has
+been called the &#8220;Cain&#8221; of Greece, because he was the first, as Pindar
+says, &#8220;to introduce to mortal men the murder of kin not unaccompanied by
+cunning.&#8221; Zeus appears, however, to have shown more leniency to him for
+the crime of killing his father-in-law than he ever did to Prometheus, as
+he not only purified him from murder, but invited him to a seat among the
+gods. But to quote Pindar again, &#8220;he found his prosperity too great to
+bear, when with infatuate mind he became enamored of Hera.... Thus his
+conceit drave him to an act of enormous folly, but the man soon suffered
+his deserts, and received an exquisite torture.&#8221; Ixion, then, in direct
+contrast to Prometheus, stands forth an embodiment of the most detestable
+of sins, perpetrated simply for personal ends. To depict such a man as
+this in an attitude of defiance, and yet to justify his defiance, is a far
+more difficult problem than to justify the already admired heroism of
+Prometheus. It is entirely characteristic of Browning that he should
+choose perhaps the most unprincipled character in the whole range of Greek
+mythology as his hero. He is not content, like Emerson, with simply
+telling us that &#8220;in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> mud and scum of things there alway, alway
+something sings&#8221;; his aim is ever to bring us face to face with reality,
+and to open our ears that we may hear for ourselves this universal song.
+In fine, Browning chose Ixion and not another, because he wanted above all
+things an unquestioned sinner; and the task he set himself was to show the
+use of sin and at the same time exonerate the sinner from the eternal
+consequences of his act.</p>
+
+<p>So mystical is the language of the poem that it is extremely difficult to
+trace behind it the subtle reasoning. Mr. Nettleship has given by far the
+best exposition of the poem, though even he does not seize all its
+suggestiveness.</p>
+
+<p>Ixion, the sinner, suffering eternal torment, questions the justice of
+such torment. The first very important conclusion to which he comes, and
+it is one entirely in accord with science, is that sin is an aberration of
+sense, merely the result of external conditions in which the soul of man
+has no active part. The soul simply dreams, but once fully awakened, it
+would free itself from this bondage of sense if it were allowed to do so.
+Ixion argues that it is Zeus that hath made him and not he himself, and if
+he has sinned it is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> through the bodily senses which Zeus has conferred
+upon him, and if he were the friendly and all-powerful god which he
+claimed himself to be and which Ixion believed he was, why did he allow
+these distractions of sense to lead him (Ixion) into sin which could only
+be expiated by eternal punishment? Without body there would have been
+nothing to obstruct his soul&#8217;s rush upon the real; and with one touch of
+pitying power Zeus might have dispersed &#8220;this film-work, eye&#8217;s and ear&#8217;s.&#8221;
+It is entirely the fault of Zeus that he had sinned; and having done so
+will external torture make him repent any more who has repented already?
+This is the old, old problem that has taxed the brains of many a
+philosopher and the faith of many a theologian&mdash;the reconcilement of the
+existence of evil with an omnipotent God. Then follows a comparison
+between the actions of Zeus, a god, and of Ixion, the human king; and
+Ixion declares could he have known all, as Zeus does, he would have warded
+off evil from his subjects, would have seen that they were trained aright
+from the first&mdash;in fact, would not have allowed evil to exist, or failing
+this, could he have seen the heart of the criminals and realized how they
+repented he would have given them a chance to retrieve their past.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> Ixion
+now realizes that his human ideal is higher than that of Zeus. He had
+imagined him possessed of human qualities, and finds his qualities are
+less than human. What must be the inevitable result of arriving at such a
+conclusion? It means the dethronement of the god, and either a lapse into
+hopeless atheism or the recognition that the conception formed of the god
+was that of the human mind at an earlier stage of understanding. This
+conception becomes crystallized into an anthropomorphic god; but the mind
+of man goes onward on its way to higher heights, and lo! there comes a day
+when the god-ideal of the past is lower than the human ideal of the
+present. It is such a crisis as this that Ixion has arrived at, and his
+faith is equal to the strain. Since Zeus is man&#8217;s own mind-made god,
+Ixion&#8217;s tortures must be the natural consequences of his sin, and not the
+arbitrary punishment of a god; and what is Ixion&#8217;s sin as Browning has
+interpreted the myth?</p>
+
+<p>The sin is that of arrogance. Ixion, a mere man, strives to be on an
+equality with gods. In Lucian&#8217;s dialogue between Hera and Zeus the stress
+is laid upon the arrogance of Ixion. Jupiter declares that Ixion shall pay
+the &#8220;penalty not of his love&mdash;for that surely is not so dreadful a
+crime&mdash;but of his loud<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> boasting.&#8221; Browning raises the sin into a rarer
+atmosphere than that of the Greek or Latin. Zeus and Hera may be taken to
+represent the attributes of power and love as conceived by man in
+Divinity; and Ixion, symbolic of man, arrogantly supposes that he is
+capable of putting himself on an equality with Divinity by conceiving the
+entire nature of Divinity, that out of his finite mind he can construct
+the absolute god, and this is the sin, or, better, the aberration of
+sense, which results in the crystallization of his former inadequate
+conceptions into an anthropomorphic god, and causes his own downfall.
+Ixion, now fully aroused to the fact that the god he has been defying is
+but his own miserable conception of God, realizes that the suffering
+caused by this conception of God is the very means through which man
+struggles toward higher ideals: through evil he is brought to a
+recognition of the good; from his agony is bred the rainbow of hope, which
+ever shines above him glorified by the light from a Purity far beyond,
+all-unobstructed. Successive conceptions of God must sink; but man,
+however misled by them, must finally burst through the obstructions of
+sense, freeing his spirit to aspire forever toward the light.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ixion,&#8221; then, is not merely an argument<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> against eternal punishment, nor
+a picture of heroic suffering, though he who will may draw these lessons
+from it, but it is a tremendous symbol of the spiritual development of
+man. Pure in its essence, the spirit learns through the obstructions of
+sense to yearn forever for higher attainment, and this constitutes the
+especial blessedness of man as contrasted with Zeus. He, like the
+Pythagorean Father of Number, is the conditioned one; but man is
+privileged through all &aelig;ons of time to break through conditions, and thus
+Ixion, triumphant, exclaims:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">&#8220;Where light, where light is, aspiring</span><br />
+Thither I rise, whilst thou&mdash;Zeus, keep the godship and sink.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In these poems, as in other phases of his work, Browning runs the gamut of
+life, of art, and of thought. He has set a new standard in regard to the
+handling of classic material, one which should open the field of classic
+lore afresh to future poets. Instead of trying to ape in more or less
+ineffectual imitations the style and thought of the great masters of
+antiquity, or simply use their mythology as a well-spring of romance to be
+clothed in whatever vagaries of style the individual poet might be able to
+invent, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> aim of the future poet should be to reconstruct the life and
+thought of that wonderful civilization. One playwright, at least, has made
+a step in the right direction. I refer to Gilbert Murray, whose classical
+scholarship has thrown so much light upon the vexed questions of
+Browning&#8217;s attitude toward Euripides, and who, in his &#8220;Andromache,&#8221; has
+written a play, not in classical, but in modern form, which seems to bring
+us more into touch with the life of Homer&#8217;s day than even Homer himself.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+<p class="title">PROPHETIC VISIONS</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">The</span> division between centuries, though it be an arbitrary one, does
+actually appear to mark fairly definite steps in human development, and
+already there are indications that the twentieth century is taking on a
+character quite distinct from that of the nineteenth. It looks now as if
+it were to be the century of the realization of mankind&#8217;s wildest dreams
+in the past. Air navigation, the elixir of life, perpetual motion, are
+some of them. About the first no one can now have much skepticism, for if
+airships are not as yet common objects of the everyday sky, they, at
+least, occupy a large share of attention in the magazines, while the
+aviator, a being who did not exist in the last century, is now the hero of
+the hour.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the second, though no sparkling elixir distilled from some
+rare flower, such as that Septimius Felton sought in Hawthorne&#8217;s tale, has
+been discovered, the great scientist Metchnikoff has brought to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> light a
+preserver of youth more in keeping with the science of the day&mdash;namely, a
+microbe, possessing power to destroy the poison that produces age. Whether
+perpetual youth is to lead to immortality in the flesh will probably be a
+question for other centuries to discuss, though if Metchnikoff is right
+there is no reason why we should not retain our youthfulness all our lives
+in this century. Add to this, machinery run by the perpetual energy of
+radium&mdash;a possibility, if radium can ever be obtained in sufficient
+quantities to supply the needed power to keep modern civilization on its
+ceaseless &#8220;go&#8221;&mdash;and we may picture to ourselves, before the end of the
+twentieth century, youths of ninety starting forth on voyages of thirty
+years in radium ships, which, like the fairy watch of the Princess
+Rossetta, will never go wrong and will never need to be wound up,
+metaphorically speaking. It would almost seem as if some method of
+enlarging the earth, or of arranging voyages to the moon and Mars, would
+be necessary in order to give the new radium machinery sufficient scope
+for its activities. However, at present it seems unlikely that it will
+ever be possible to produce more than half an ounce of radium a year. As
+it would take a ton to run one ship for thirty years, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> the expense
+would be something almost incalculable, it is a dream only to be realized
+by the inventing of methods by which the feeble radio-activity known to
+exist in many other substances can be utilized. These methods have not yet
+been invented, but it is a good deal that they have been thought of, for
+what man thinks of he generally seems to have the indomitable energy to
+accomplish.</p>
+
+<p>How such inventions as these, even if very far from attaining success, may
+affect the social and thought ideals of the century it is impossible to
+say. The automobile is said to have brought about a change, not altogether
+beneficial, to the intellectual and artistic growth of society to-day. It
+has taken such powerful possession of the minds of humanity that homes
+have been mortgaged, music and books and pictures have been sacrificed, in
+order that all the money procurable could be put into the machines and
+their running. You hear complaints against the automobile from writers,
+musicians, and artists. The only thing that really has a good sale is the
+automobile. What effect rushing about so constantly at high speed in the
+open air is to have on the brain-power is another interesting problem.
+Perhaps it is this growing subjective<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> delight in motion which is causing
+the development of an artistic taste dependent upon motion as its chief
+element. Motion pictures and dancing appeal to the public with such
+insistence that plays will not hold successfully without an almost
+exaggerated attention to action and dancing, which, whenever it is at all
+possible, make a part of the &#8220;show.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The pictures of the new school of painters, the futurists, also reveal the
+craze for motion. They try to put into their pictures the successive and
+decidedly blurred impressions, from the illustrations I have seen, of
+scenes in motion, with a result that is certainly startling and
+interesting, but which it is difficult to believe is beautiful. One has a
+horrible suspicion that all this emphasis upon motion in art is a running
+to seed of the art which appeals to the eye and with a psychological
+content derived principally from sensation. Perhaps in some other century,
+fatuous humanity will like to listen to operas or to plays in a pitch-dark
+theatre. This will represent the going to seed of the art which appeals to
+the ear, and a psychological content derived principally from sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>While movement seems to be the keynote of the century thus far, in its
+everyday life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> and in its art manifestation, very interesting developments
+are taking place in scientific theories and in philosophy, as well as in
+the world of education and sociology.</p>
+
+<p>In relation to Browning and the other chief poets of the nineteenth
+century, the only aspects of interest are in the region of thought and
+social ideals.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of Tennyson, no other of the chief poets of the century
+need be considered in this connection with Browning, because, as we have
+seen in a previous chapter, they reflected on the whole the prevalent
+disbelief and doubt of the century which came with the revelations of
+science. Many people have regarded Tennyson as the chief prophet of the
+century. He seems, however, to the present writer to have held an attitude
+which reflected the general tone of religious aspiration in the century,
+rather than one which struck a new note indicating the direction in which
+future religious aspiration might turn.</p>
+
+<p>The conflict in his mind is between doubt and belief. To doubt he has
+often given the most poignant expression, as in his poem called &#8220;Despair.&#8221;
+The story is of a man and his wife who have lost all religious faith
+through the reading of scientific books:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>
+&#8220;Have I crazed myself over their horrible infidel writings? O, yes,<br />
+For these are the new dark ages, you see, of the popular press,<br />
+When the bat comes out of his cave, and the owls are whooping at noon,<br />
+And doubt is the lord of the dunghill, and crows to the sun and the moon,<br />
+Till the sun and the moon of our science are both of them turned into blood.<br />
+And hope will have broken her heart, running after a shadow of good;<br />
+For their knowing and know-nothing books are scatter&#8217;d from hand to hand&mdash;<br />
+<i>We</i> have knelt in your know-all chapel, too, looking over the sand.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>If the effect of science was bad upon this weak-minded pair, the effect of
+religion as it had been taught them was no better. The absolute
+hopelessness of a blasted faith in all things reaches its climax in the
+following stanzas:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;And the suns of the limitless universe sparkled and shone in the sky,<br />
+Flashing with fires as of God, but we knew that their light was a lie&mdash;<br />
+Bright as with deathless hope&mdash;but, however they sparkled and shone,<br />
+The dark little worlds running round them were worlds of woe like our own&mdash;<br />
+No soul in the heaven above, no soul on the earth below,<br />
+A fiery scroll written over with lamentation and woe.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span><br />
+&#8220;See, we were nursed in the drear nightfold of your fatalist creed,<br />
+And we turn&#8217;d to the growing dawn, we had hoped for a dawn indeed,<br />
+When the light of a sun that was coming would scatter the ghosts of the past.<br />
+And the cramping creeds that had madden&#8217;d the peoples would vanish at last,<br />
+And we broke away from the Christ, our human brother and friend,<br />
+For He spoke, or it seemed that He spoke, of a hell without help, without end.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Hoped for a dawn, and it came, but the promise had faded away;<br />
+We had passed from a cheerless night to the glare of a drearier day;<br />
+He is only a cloud and a smoke who was once a pillar of fire,<br />
+The guess of a worm in the dust and the shadow of its desire&mdash;<br />
+Of a worm as it writhes in a world of the weak trodden down by the strong,<br />
+Of a dying worm in a world, all massacre, murder and wrong.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There are many hopeful passages in Tennyson to offset such deep pessimism
+as is expressed in this one, which, moreover, being a dramatic utterance
+it must be remembered, does not reflect any settled conviction on the
+poet&#8217;s part, though it shows him liable to moods of the most extreme
+doubt. In &#8220;The Ancient Sage&#8221; the agnostic spirit of the century is fully
+described, but instead of leading to a mood of despair, the mood is one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span>
+of clinging to faith in the face of all doubt. The sage speaking, says:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son,<br />
+Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in,<br />
+Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,<br />
+Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one.<br />
+Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no,<br />
+Nor yet that thou art mortal&mdash;nay, my son,<br />
+Thou canst not prove that I who speak with thee,<br />
+Are not thyself in converse with thyself,<br />
+For nothing worthy proving can be proven,<br />
+Nor yet disproven. Wherefore thou be wise,<br />
+Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,<br />
+And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith!<br />
+She reels not in the storm of warring words,<br />
+She brightens at the clash of &#8216;Yes&#8217; and &#8216;No.&#8217;<br />
+She sees the best that glimmers thro&#8217; the worst,<br />
+She feels the sun is hid but for a night,<br />
+She spies the summer thro&#8217; the winter bud,<br />
+She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,<br />
+She hears the lark within the songless egg,<br />
+She finds the fountain where they wail&#8217;d Mirage!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing here more reassuring than a statement made by the sage,
+based upon no argument, nor revelation, nor intuition&mdash;nothing but the
+utilitarian doctrine that it will be wiser to cling to Faith beyond Faith!
+This is a sample of the sort of assurance in the reality of God and of
+immortality which Tennyson was in the habit of giving. In the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> poem called
+&#8220;Vastness&#8221; he presents with genuine power a pessimistic view of humanity
+and civilization in all its various phases&mdash;all of no use, neither the
+good any more than the bad, &#8220;if we all of us end but in being our own
+corpse-coffins at last?&#8221; The effect of the dismal atmosphere of the poem
+as a whole is supposed to be dissipated by the last stanza:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Peace, let it be! for I loved him, and love him forever: the dead are not dead but alive.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The conviction here of immortality through personal love is born of the
+feeling that his friend whom he has loved must live forever. The note of
+&#8220;In Memoriam&#8221; is sounded again. Tennyson&#8217;s philosophy, in a nutshell,
+seems to be that doubts are not so much overcome as quieted by a
+struggling faith in the truths of religion, of which the chief assurance
+lies in the thought of personal love. Not as in Browning, that human love,
+because of its beauty and ecstasy, is a symbol of divine love, but because
+of its wish to be reunited to the one beloved is an earnest of continued
+existence. While Tennyson&#8217;s poetry is saturated with allusions to the
+science of the century, it seems to be ever the dark side of the doctrine
+of evolution that is dwelt upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> by him, while his religion is held to in
+spite of the truths of science, not because the truths of science have
+given him in any way a new revelation of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Much more emphasis has been laid upon Tennyson&#8217;s importance as a prophet
+in religious matters than seems to the present writer warranted. He did
+not even keep pace with the thought of the century, though his poetry
+undoubtedly reflected the liberalized theology of the earlier years of the
+second half of the century. As Joseph Jacobs says, &#8220;In Memoriam&#8221; has been
+to the Broad Church Movement what the &#8220;Christian Year&#8221; has been to the
+High Church. But where is the Broad Church now? Tennyson was, on the
+whole, adverse to evolution, which has been almost an instinct in English
+speculation for the last quarter of a century. So far as he was the voice
+of his age in speculative matters, he only represented the thought of the
+&#8220;sixties.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>What vision Tennyson did have came not through intuition or the higher
+reason, but through his psychic power of self-hypnotism. In &#8220;The Ancient
+Sage&#8221; is a passage describing the sort of trance into which he could
+evidently cause himself to fall:</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>
+<span style="margin-left: 8.5em;">&#8220;For more than once when I</span><br />
+Sat all alone, revolving in myself<br />
+The word that is the symbol of myself,<br />
+The mortal limit of the self was loosed,<br />
+And passed into the Nameless, as a cloud<br />
+Melts into Heaven. I touch&#8217;d my limbs, the limbs<br />
+Were strange, not mine&mdash;and yet no shade of doubt,<br />
+But utter clearness, and thro&#8217; loss of self,<br />
+The gain of such large life as match&#8217;d with ours<br />
+Were sun to spark&mdash;unshadowable in words,<br />
+Themselves but shadows of a shadow world.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Such trances have been of common occurrence in the religious life of the
+world, as Professor James has shown so exhaustively in his great book,
+&#8220;Varieties of Religious Experience.&#8221; And in that book, too, it is
+maintained, against the scientific conclusions, that such ecstasies
+&#8220;signify nothing but suggested and imitated hypnoid states, on an
+intellectual basis of superstition, and a corporal one of degeneration and
+hysteria,&#8221; that mystical states have an actual value as revelations of the
+truth. After passing in review many examples of ecstasy and trance, from
+the occasional experiences of the poets to the constant experiences of the
+medi&aelig;val mystics and the Hindu Yogis, he finally comes to the interesting
+conclusion that:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and
+the absolute is the great mystic achievement.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> In mystic states we
+both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our one-ness.
+This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly
+altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in
+Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we
+find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical
+utterances an eternal unanimity&mdash;which ought to make a critic stop and
+think, and which brings it about that the mystical classics have, as
+has been said, neither birthday nor native land.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>The witness given religion in Tennyson&#8217;s mystical trances is then his most
+valuable contribution to the speculative thought of the century, and in a
+sense is prophetic of the twentieth century, because in this century
+revelations attained in this way have been given a credence long denied
+them except in the case of the uneducated and super-emotional, by a man of
+the sound scholarship and good judgment of Professor James.</p>
+
+<p>How fully Browning was a representative of the thought of this time,
+combining as he did an intuitional with a scientific outlook has already
+been shown. Evolution means for him the progress toward the infinite, and
+is full of beauty and promise. The failures in nature and life which fill
+Tennyson with despair furnish to Browning&#8217;s mind a proof of the existence
+of the absolute, or a somewhere beyond, where things will be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> righted.
+Observation shows him everywhere in the universe the existence of power
+and mystery. The mystery is either that of the incomprehensibleness of
+causes, or is emphasized in the existence of evil. The first leads to awe
+and wonder, and is a constant spur to mankind to seek further knowledge,
+but the poet insists that the knowledge so accumulated is not actual gain,
+but only a means to gain in so far as it keeps bringing home to the human
+mind the fact of its own inadequacy in the discovery of truth. The
+existence of evil leads to the constant effort to overcome it, and to
+sympathy and pity, and as the failure of knowledge proves a future of
+truth to be won, so the failure of mankind to attain perfection in moral
+action proves a future of goodness to be realized. All this may be found
+either explicitly or implied in the synthetic philosophy of Herbert
+Spencer, whose fundamental principles, despite the fire of criticism to
+which he has been subjected from all sides&mdash;science, religion,
+metaphysics, each of which felt it could not claim him exclusively as its
+own, yet resenting his inclusion of the other two&mdash;are now, in the first
+decade of the twentieth century, receiving the fullest recognition by such
+masters of the history of nineteenth-century<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> thought as Theodore Merz and
+&Eacute;mile Boutroux.</p>
+
+<p>People often forget that while Spencer spent his life upon the knowledge
+or scientific side of human experience, he frequently asserted that there
+was in the human consciousness an intuition of the absolute which was the
+only certain knowledge possessed by man. Here again Browning was at one
+with Spencer. Discussing the problem of a future life in &#8220;La Saisiaz,&#8221; he
+declares that God and the soul are the only facts of which he is
+absolutely certain:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;I have questioned and am answered. Question, answer presuppose<br />
+Two points: that the thing itself which questions, answers&mdash;<i>is</i>, it knows;<br />
+As it also knows the thing perceived outside itself&mdash;a force<br />
+Actual ere its own beginning, operative through its course,<br />
+Unaffected by its end&mdash;that this thing likewise needs must be;<br />
+Call this&mdash;God, then, call that&mdash;soul, and both&mdash;the only facts for me.<br />
+Prove them facts? That they o&#8217;erpass my power of proving, proves them such.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>To this scientific and metaphysical side Browning adds, as has also
+already been pointed out, a mystical side based upon feeling. His
+revelations of divinity do not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> come by means of self-induced trances, as
+Tennyson&#8217;s seem to have come, but through the mystery of feeling. This
+mystical state seems to have been his habitual one, if we may judge by its
+prominence in his poetry. He occasionally descends to the realm of reason,
+as he has in &#8220;La Saisiaz,&#8221; but the true plane of his existence is up among
+the exaltations of aspiration and love. His cosmic sense is a sense of God
+as Love, and is the quality most characteristic of the man. It is like,
+though perhaps not identical with, the mysticism of Whitman, which seems
+to have been an habitual state. He writes: &#8220;There is, apart from mere
+intellect, in the make-up of every superior human identity, a wondrous
+something that realizes without argument, frequently without what is
+called education (though I think it the goal and apex of all education
+deserving the name), an intuition of the absolute balance, in time and
+space, of the whole of this multifariousness, this revel of fools, and
+incredible make-believe and general unsettledness we call <i>the world</i>; a
+soul-sight of that divine clue and unseen thread which holds the whole
+congeries of things, all history and time, and all events, however
+trivial, however momentous, like a leashed dog in the hand of the
+hunter.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>This mystic mood of Browning&#8217;s which underlies his whole work&mdash;even a work
+like &#8220;The Ring and the Book,&#8221; where evil in various forms is rampant and
+seems for the time being to conquer&mdash;is nowhere more fully, and at the
+same time more concisely, expressed than in his poem &#8220;Reverie,&#8221; one of his
+last, which ends with a full revelation of this mystical feeling, from
+which the less inspired reasoning of &#8220;La Saisiaz&#8221; is a descent:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Even as the world its life,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">So have I lived my own&mdash;</span><br />
+Power seen with Love at strife,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That sure, this dimly shown&mdash;</span><br />
+Good rare and evil rife<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Whereof the effect be&mdash;faith<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That, some far day, were found</span><br />
+Ripeness in things now rathe,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wrong righted, each chain unbound,</span><br />
+Renewal born out of scathe.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Why faith&mdash;but to lift the load,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To leaven the lump, where lies</span><br />
+Mind prostrate through knowledge owed<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To the loveless Power it tries</span><br />
+To withstand, how vain! In flowed<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Ever resistless fact:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No more than the passive clay</span><br />
+Disputes the potter&#8217;s act,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Could the whelmed mind disobey</span><br />
+Knowledge the cataract.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span><br />
+&#8220;But, perfect in every part,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Has the potter&#8217;s moulded shape,</span><br />
+Leap of man&#8217;s quickened heart,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Throe of his thought&#8217;s escape,</span><br />
+Stings of his soul which dart,<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Through the barrier of flesh, till keen<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">She climbs from the calm and clear,</span><br />
+Through turbidity all between<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">From the known to the unknown here,</span><br />
+Heaven&#8217;s &#8216;Shall be&#8217; from Earth&#8217;s &#8216;Has been&#8217;?<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Then life is&mdash;to wake not sleep,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Rise and not rest, but press</span><br />
+From earth&#8217;s level where blindly creep<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Things perfected more or less,</span><br />
+To the heaven&#8217;s height, far and steep,<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Where, amid what strifes and storms<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">May wait the adventurous quest,</span><br />
+Power is Love&mdash;transports, transforms,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Who aspired from worst to best,</span><br />
+Sought the soul&#8217;s world, spurned the worms!<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;I have faith such end shall be:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">From the first, Power was&mdash;I knew.</span><br />
+Life has made clear to me<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That, strive but for closer view,</span><br />
+Love were as plain to see.<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;When see? When there dawns a day,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">If not on the homely earth,</span><br />
+Then yonder, worlds away,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Where the strange and new have birth</span><br />
+And Power comes full in play.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>Browning has, far more than Tennyson, put religious speculation upon a
+basis where it may stand irrespective of a belief in the revelations of
+historical Christianity. For the central doctrine of Christianity he had
+so profound a reverence that he recurs to it again and again in his
+poetry, and at times his feeling seems to carry him to the verge of
+orthodox belief. So near does he come to it that many religious critics
+have been convinced that he might be claimed as a Christian in the
+orthodox sense of the word.</p>
+
+<p>A more careful reading, however, of such poems as &#8220;The Death in the
+Desert,&#8221; and &#8220;Christmas Eve and Easter Day,&#8221; upon which rest principally
+the claim of the poet&#8217;s orthodoxy, will reveal that no certain assertion
+of a belief in supernaturalism is made, even though the poems are dramatic
+and it might be made without necessarily expressing the feeling of the
+poet. What Browning felt was that in historical Christianity the highest
+symbol of divine love had been reached. Though he may at times have had
+moods in which he would fain have believed true an ideal which held for
+him great beauty, his worth for his age was in saving religion, <i>not</i> upon
+a basis of faith, but upon the ground of logical arguments deduced from
+the failure<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> of knowledge, of his personal intuition of God and his
+mystical vision in regard to the nature of God.</p>
+
+<p>So complete a synthesis is this that only in the present century is its
+full purport likely to be realized. The thought of the century is showing
+everywhere a strong reaction away from materialism and toward religious
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>Even in the latest stronghold of science, psychology, as we have already
+seen, there is no formula which will explain the existence of
+individuality. While the scientists themselves plod on, often quite
+unconscious that they are not dealing with ultimates, the thinkers are no
+longer satisfied with a philosophy of materialism, and once more it is
+being recognized that the province of philosophy is to give us God, the
+soul and immortality.</p>
+
+<p>It is especially interesting in this connection to observe that Germany,
+the land of destructive biblical criticism, which Browning before the
+middle of the century handled with the consummate skill characteristic of
+him, by accepting its historical conclusions while conserving the spirit
+of Christianity, has now in the person of Professor Rudolf Eucken done an
+almost similar thing. Like Browning,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> he is a strong individualist and
+believes that the development of the soul is the one thing of supreme
+moment. &#8220;There is a spontaneous springing up of the individual spiritual
+life,&#8221; he writes, &#8220;only within the soul of the individual. All social and
+all historical life that does not unceasingly draw from this source falls
+irrecoverably into a state of stagnation and desolation. The individual
+can never be reduced to the position of a mere member of society, of a
+church, of a state; notwithstanding all external subordination, he must
+assert an inner superiority; each spiritual individual is more than the
+whole external world.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img17.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Browning at 77 (1889)</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>He calls his system &#8220;activism,&#8221; which merely seems to be another way of
+saying that the soul-life is one of aspiration toward moral ideals and the
+will to carry them out. Such a life, he thinks, demands a new world and a
+new character in man, and is entirely at variance with nature. &#8220;Our whole
+life is an indefatigable seeking and pressing forward. In
+self-consciousness the framework is given which has to be filled; in it we
+have acquired only the basis upon which the superstructure has to be
+raised. We have to find experience in life itself to reveal something new,
+to develop life, to increase its range and depth.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> The endeavor to advance
+in spirituality, to win through struggle, is the soul of the life of the
+individual and the work of universal history.&#8221; Readers of Browning will
+certainly not feel that there is anything new in this.</p>
+
+<p>In so far, however, as he finds the spiritual life at variance with nature
+he parts company with Browning, showing himself to be under the influence
+of the dualism of the past which regarded matter and spirit as
+antagonistic. In Browning&#8217;s view, matter and spirit are the two aspects of
+God, in the one, power being manifested; in the other, love.</p>
+
+<p>It follows naturally from this, that Eucken does not think of evil as a
+means by which good is developed. He prefers to regard it as unexplained,
+and forever with us to be overcome. Its reduction to a means of realizing
+the good leads, he thinks, &#8220;to a weakening which threatens to transform
+the mighty world-struggle into an artistic arrangement of things and into
+an effeminate play, and which takes away that bitterness from evil without
+which there is no strenuousness in the struggle and no vitality in life.
+Thus it remains true that religion does not so much explain as presuppose
+evil.&#8221; An attempt to explain evil, he says, belongs to speculation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> rather
+than to religion. That he has an inkling of the region to which
+speculation might lead him is shown when it is realized, that upon his
+explanation, as one critic of him has said, it might be possible to find
+&#8220;some reconciliation in the fact that this world with its negations had
+awakened the spiritual life to its absolute affirmation, which could,
+therefore, not be in absolute opposition.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In leaving aside speculation and confining himself to what he considers
+the religious aspects of life, he no doubt strengthens himself as a leader
+of those whose speculative powers have not yet been developed, or who can
+put one side of the mind to sleep and accept with the other half-truths.
+The more developed mind, however, will prefer Browning&#8217;s greater
+inclusiveness. To possess a complete view of life, man must live his own
+life as a human being struggling to overcome the evil, at the same time
+keeping in mind the fact that evil is in a sense the raw material provided
+by God, or the Absolute, or whatever name one chooses to give to the
+all-powerful and all-loving, from which the active soul of man is to
+derive a richness of beauty and harmony of development not otherwise
+possible. Eucken&#8217;s attitude toward Jesus is summed up in a way which
+reminds one strongly of the position<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> taken in the comment made at the end
+of &#8220;The Death in the Desert.&#8221; He writes: &#8220;The position of the believer in
+the universal Christian Church is grounded upon a relation to God whose
+uniqueness emerges from the essential divinity of Jesus; only on this
+supposition can the personality of Christ stand as the unconditional Lord
+and Master to whom the ages must do homage. And while the person of Jesus
+retains a wonderful majesty apart from dogma, its greatness is confined to
+the realm of humanity, and whatever of new and divine life it brings to us
+must be potential and capable of realization in us all. We therefore see
+no more in this figure the normative and universally valid type of all
+human life, but merely an incomparable individuality which cannot be
+directly imitated. At any rate the figure of Jesus, thus understood in all
+its height and pure humanity, can no longer be an object of faith and
+divine honor. All attempts to take shelter in a mediating position are
+shattered against a relentless either&mdash;or. Between man and God there is no
+intermediate form of being for us, for we cannot sink back into the
+ancient cult of heroes. If Jesus, therefore, is not God, if Christ is not
+the second person in the Trinity, then he is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> man; not a man like any
+average man among ourselves, but still man. We can therefore honor him as
+a leader, a hero, a martyr, but we cannot directly bind ourselves to him
+or root ourselves in him; we cannot submit to him unconditionally. Still
+less can we make him the centre of a cult. To do so from our point of view
+would be nothing else than an intolerable deification of a human being.&#8221;
+The comment at the end of &#8220;The Death in the Desert&#8221; puts a similar
+question, and answers, &#8220;Call Christ, then, the illimitable God, Or Lost!&#8221;
+But the final word which casts a light back upon the previous conclusion
+is &#8220;But, &#8217;twas Cerinthus that is lost&#8221;&mdash;the man, in other words, who held
+the heresy that the Christ part only resided in Jesus, who was merely
+human, and that the divine part was not crucified, having flown away
+before. Thus it is implied that neither those who believe Jesus divine,
+nor those who believe him human, are lost, but those who try as Cerinthus
+did to make a compromise. The same note is struck in &#8220;Christmas Eve,&#8221; and
+now Professor Eucken takes an exactly similar ground in regard to any sort
+of compromise, coming out boldly, however, as Browning does not in this
+poem, though he makes no strong argument against it&mdash;in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> the acceptance of
+Christ as human. Browning&#8217;s own attitude is expressed as clearly as it is
+anywhere in his work in the epilogue to &#8220;Dramatis Person&aelig;,&#8221; in which the
+conclusion is entirely in sympathy with that of Eucken:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;When you see what I tell you&mdash;nature dance<br />
+About each man of us, retire, advance,<br />
+As though the pageant&#8217;s end were to enhance<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;His worth, and&mdash;once the life, his product gained&mdash;<br />
+Roll away elsewhere, keep the strife sustained,<br />
+And show thus real, a thing the North but feigned&mdash;<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;When you acknowledge that one world could do<br />
+All the diverse work, old yet ever new,<br />
+Divide us, each from other, me from you&mdash;<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Why, where&#8217;s the need of Temple, when the walls<br />
+O&#8217; the world are that? What use of swells and falls<br />
+From Levites&#8217; choir, Priests&#8217; cries, and trumpet calls?<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,<br />
+Or decomposes but to recompose,<br />
+Become my universe that feels and knows.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The hold which the philosophy of Eucken seems to have taken upon the minds
+of many people all over the world shows that it must have great elements
+of strength. That there is a partial resemblance between his thought,
+which belongs to the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the
+twentieth century, and Browning&#8217;s is certain, but the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> fact remains that
+the poet made a synthesis of the elements which must go to the forming of
+any complete religious conceptions of the future so far in advance of his
+own century that even Eucken is in some respects behind it.</p>
+
+<p>Another interesting instance of Browning&#8217;s presenting a line of reasoning
+which resembles very strongly one phase of present-day philosophy is to be
+found in &#8220;Bishop Blougram&#8217;s Apology.&#8221; The worldly Bishop gives voice to
+good pragmatic doctrine, which in a nutshell is, &#8220;believe in, or rather
+follow, that ideal which will be of the most use to you, and if it turns
+out not to be successful, then try another one.&#8221; The poet declares that
+Blougram said good things but called them by wrong names. If the ideal is
+a high one there is no great danger in such reasoning, but it can very
+easily be turned into sophistical arguments for an ideal of living to
+thoroughly selfish ends, as Blougram actually did. The poem might almost
+be taken as a prophetic criticism of the weak aspects of pragmatism.</p>
+
+<p>The belief in immortality which pervades Browning&#8217;s work often comes out
+in a form suggesting the idea of reincarnation. His future for the human
+soul is not a heaven of bliss, but life in other worlds full of activity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span>
+and aspiration. This note is struck in &#8220;Paracelsus,&#8221; where life&#8217;s destiny
+is described to be the climbing of pleasure&#8217;s heights forever the seeking
+of a flying point of bliss remote. In his last volume the idea is more
+fully brought out in &#8220;Rephan.&#8221; In this it is held that a state of perfect
+bliss might grow monotonous, and that a preferable state would be to
+aspire, yet never attain, to the object aimed at. The transmigration is
+from &#8220;Rephan,&#8221; where all was merged in a neutral Best to Earth, where the
+soul which had been stagnating would have an opportunity to strive, not
+rest. The most beautiful expression, however, of the idea of a future of
+many lives is found in &#8220;One Word More&#8221;:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;So it seems: I stand on my attainment.<br />
+This of verse, alone, one life allows me;<br />
+Verse and nothing else have I to give you.<br />
+Other heights in other lives, God willing:<br />
+All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Though the theory of reincarnation is so ancient a one, and one entirely
+discredited by Christianity, Browning was again expressing an ideal which
+was to be revived in our own day. Oriental thought has made it almost a
+commonplace of talk. Many people doubtless speak of what they mean to do
+in their next incarnation without having the thought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> very deeply imbedded
+in their consciousness, yet the mere fact that one hears the remark so
+often proves what a hold the theory has on the imagination of mankind. As
+Browning gives it in &#8220;One Word More,&#8221; the successive incarnations take one
+on to higher heights&mdash;&#8220;other lives in other worlds.&#8221; Thus regarded, it is
+the final outcome of evolution and progress, a process to be carried
+forward in other worlds than our own, and has no degrading suggestion of a
+degenerating, because of sin, into lower forms of existence. The movement
+is always upward. Thus it has been effected by the idea that progress is
+the law of life, and that evolution means, on the whole, progress.</p>
+
+<p>Again, in the liberality of his social ideals, combined with an intensest
+belief in the supremacy of genuine love, he was the forerunner of Ibsen,
+who, the world is beginning to discover, was not a subverter of high moral
+ideals, as it had thought, but a prophet of the new day, when to be untrue
+to the highest ideal of love will be accounted the greatest crime of one
+human being against another. From &#8220;The Doll&#8217;s House&#8221; to &#8220;When We That Are
+Dead Awaken&#8221; the same lesson is taught. Few people realize that this is
+the keynote of Browning&#8217;s teaching, or would be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> ready to regard him as a
+prophet of an ideal of love which shall come to be seen as the true one
+after the science of eugenics, the latest of the exact sciences, has found
+itself as powerless as all other sciences have been to touch the reality
+of life, because amid all the mysteries of the universe none is greater
+than the spiritual mystery of love. Among writers who are to-day
+recognizing a part of the truth, at least, is Ellen Key, but neither she
+nor Ibsen has insisted in the way that Browning has upon the mystical
+source of human love. That Browning is the poet who has given the world
+the utmost certainty of God, the soul and immortality, and the most
+inspiring ideals of human love, will be more completely recognized in the
+future. As time goes on he will emerge above the tumultuous intellectual
+life of the present, which, with its enormous increase of knowledge of
+phenomena, bringing with it a fairly titanic mastery of the forces of
+nature, and its generation of multitudes of ideas upon every conceivable
+subject, many of them trite, many of them puerile, and some of them no
+doubt of genuine value, obscures for the time being the greatness of any
+one voice. A little later, when the winnowing of ideas shall come,
+Browning will be recognized as one of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> greatest men of his own age or
+any age&mdash;a man combining knowledge, wisdom, aspiration, and vision to a
+marvelous degree. He belongs to the master-order of poets, who write some
+things which will pass into the popular knowledge of the day, but whose
+serious achievements will be read and studied by the cultured and
+scholarly of all time. No students of Greek literature will feel that they
+can omit from their reading his Greek poems, no students of sociology will
+feel that they can omit from their reading &#8220;The Ring and the Book.&#8221; Lovers
+of the drama must ever respond to the beauty of &#8220;The Blot in the
+&#8217;Scutcheon&#8221; and &#8220;Pippa Passes.&#8221; Even the student of verse technique will
+not be able to leave Browning out of account, and making allowances for
+the fact that the individuality of his style sometimes overasserts itself,
+he will realize more and more its freshness and its vividness, its power
+of suggestion, and its depths of emotional fervor. When the romanticism of
+a Keats or a Shelley has completely worked itself out in musical
+efflorescence; from which all thought-content has disappeared, there may
+grow up a school of poets which shall, without direct imitation, develop
+poetry along the lines of vigor and strength in form, and which shall have
+for its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> content a tremendous sense of the worth of humanity and an
+unshakable belief in the splendor of its destiny. <i>Virilists</i> might well
+be the name of this future school of poets who would hark back to Browning
+as their inspiration, and a most pleasant contrast would they be to the
+sentimental namby-pambyism which passes muster as poetry in much of the
+work of to-day.</p>
+
+<p>In closing this volume which has been inspired by a deep sense of the
+abiding greatness of Robert Browning, it has been my desire to put on
+record in some way my personal indebtedness to his poetry as an
+inspiration not only to high thinking and living, but as a genuine
+revelation to me of the rare possibilities in poetic art, for I may almost
+say that Browning was my first poet, and through him, strange as it may
+seem, I came to an appreciation of all other poets. His poetry,
+fortunately for me an early influence in my life, awakened my, until then,
+dormant faculty for poetic appreciation. I owe him, therefore, a double
+debt of gratitude: Not only has he given me the joy of knowing his own
+great work, but through him I have entered the land of all po&eacute;sie, led as
+I truly think by his sympathy with the scientific dispensation into which
+I was born. His<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> thought has always seemed so naturally akin to my own
+that it has never seemed to me obscure. Finding such thoughts expressed
+through the medium of great poetic genius, the beauty of poetic expression
+was brought home to me as it never had been before, and hence the poetic
+expression of all thought became a deep pleasure to me.</p>
+
+<p>So much interpretation and criticism of Browning has been given to the
+world during the last twenty years, that further work in that direction
+seems hardly necessary for the present. There will for many a day to come
+be those who feel him to be among the greatest poets the world has seen,
+and those who find much more to blame in his work than to praise.</p>
+
+<p>I have tried to give a few suggestions in regard to what Robert Browning
+actually was in relation to his time. The nineteenth century was so
+remarkable a one in the complexity of its growth, both in practical
+affairs and in intellectual developments, that it has been possible in the
+space of one volume to touch only upon the most important aspects under
+each division, and to try to show what measure of influence important
+movements had in the molding of the poet&#8217;s genius.</p>
+
+<p>Though in the nature of the case the treatment could not be exhaustive, I
+hope to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> have opened out a sufficient number of pathways into the
+fascinating vistas of the nineteenth century in its relation to Browning
+to inspire others to make further excursions for themselves; and, above
+all, I hope I may have added at least one stone to the cairn which many,
+past and to come, are building to his fame.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">THE END</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><strong>Footnotes:</strong></p>
+
+<p><a name="f1" id="f1" href="#f1.1">[1]</a> The influence of the &#8220;Prometheus Unbound&#8221; upon the conception of
+Aprile&#8217;s character was first brought forward by the writer in a paper read
+before the Boston Browning Society, March 15, 1910, a typewritten copy of
+which was placed in the Browning alcove in the Boston Public Library. In
+the &#8220;Life of Browning,&#8221; published the same year and not read by the writer
+until recently, Mr. Hall Griffin touches upon the same thought in the
+following words: &#8220;From some elements in the myth of Prometheus Browning
+unmistakably evolved the conception of his Aprile as not only the lover
+and the poet but as the potential sculptor, painter, orator, and
+musician.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name="f2" id="f2" href="#f2.1">[2]</a> See the author&#8217;s &#8220;Browning&#8217;s England.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name="f3" id="f3" href="#f3.1">[3]</a> See Introduction to &#8220;Ring and Book&#8221;&mdash;Camberwell Browning.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Browning and His Century, by Helen Archibald Clarke
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+</body>
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+Project Gutenberg's Browning and His Century, by Helen Archibald Clarke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Browning and His Century
+
+Author: Helen Archibald Clarke
+
+Release Date: February 14, 2012 [EBook #38874]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY
+
+
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+  BROWNING'S ITALY
+  BROWNING'S ENGLAND
+  A GUIDE TO MYTHOLOGY
+  ANCIENT MYTHS IN MODERN POETS
+  LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY
+  HAWTHORNE'S COUNTRY
+  THE POETS' NEW ENGLAND
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: BROWNING AT 23 (LONDON 1835)]
+
+
+
+
+  Browning and His Century
+
+
+  BY HELEN ARCHIBALD CLARKE
+  Author of "_Browning's Italy_,"
+  "_Browning's England_," etc.
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
+
+
+  GARDEN CITY      NEW YORK
+  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+  1912
+
+
+
+
+  _Copyright, 1912, by_
+  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.
+
+  _All rights reserved, including that of
+  translation into foreign languages,
+  including the Scandinavian_
+
+
+
+
+  To
+  THE BOSTON BROWNING SOCIETY
+  IN COMMEMORATION OF THE
+  BROWNING CENTENARY--1812-1912
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                    PAGE
+
+  CHAPTER I
+    THE BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT                      3
+
+  CHAPTER II
+    THE CENTURY'S END: PROMISE OF PEACE               77
+
+  CHAPTER III
+    POLITICAL TENDENCIES                             118
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+    SOCIAL IDEALS                                    174
+
+  CHAPTER V
+    ART SHIBBOLETHS                                  217
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+    CLASSIC SURVIVALS                                277
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+    PROPHETIC VISIONS                                342
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  Browning at 23 (London 1835)            _Frontispiece_
+
+                                             FACING PAGE
+
+  Paracelsus                                          38
+
+  Herbert Spencer                                     94
+
+  David Strauss                                      112
+
+  Cardinal Wiseman                                   120
+
+  William Ewart Gladstone                            160
+
+  William Morris                                     196
+
+  John Burns                                         208
+
+  Alfred Tennyson                                    250
+
+  A. C. Swinburne                                    260
+
+  Dante Gabriel Rossetti                             266
+
+  George Meredith                                    272
+
+  Euripides                                          296
+
+  Aristophanes                                       306
+
+  Walter Savage Landor                               330
+
+  Browning at 77 (1889)                              360
+
+
+
+
+BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+
+TO ROBERT BROWNING
+
+  "Say not we know but rather that we love,
+    And so we know enough." Thus deeply spoke
+    The Sage; and in men's stunted hearts awoke
+  A haunting fear, for fain are they to prove
+  Their life, their God, with yeas and nays that move
+    The mind's uncertain flow. Then fierce outbroke,--
+    Knowledge, the child of pain shall we revoke?
+  The guide wherewith men climb to things above?
+  Nay, calm your fears! 'Tis but the mere mind's knowing,
+    The soul's alone the poet worthy deeming.
+    Let mind up-build its entities of seeming
+  With toil and tears! The toil is but for showing
+    How much there lacks of truth. But 'tis no dreaming
+    When sky throbs back to heart, with God's love beaming.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT
+
+
+During the nineteenth century, which has already receded far enough into
+the perspective of the past for us to be able to take a comprehensive view
+of it, the advance guard of the human race found itself in a position
+entirely different from that ever before occupied by it. Through the
+knowledge of cosmic, animal, and social evolution gradually accumulated by
+the laborious and careful studies of special students in every department
+of historical research and scientific experiment, a broader and higher
+state of self-consciousness was attained. Mankind, on its most perceptive
+plane, no longer pinned its faith to inherited traditions, whether of
+religion, art, or morals. Every conceivable fact and every conceivable
+myth was to be tested in the laboratory of the intellect, even the
+intellect itself was to undergo dissection, with the result that, once for
+all, it has been decided what particular range of human knowledge lies
+within the reach of mental perception, and what particular range of human
+knowledge can be grasped only through spiritual perception.
+
+Such a momentous decision as this in the history of thought has not been
+reached without a long and protracted struggle extending back into the
+early days of Christianity, nor, it may be said, is the harmony as yet
+complete, for there are to-day, and perhaps always will be, human beings
+whose consciousness is not fully orbed and who either seek their point of
+equilibrium too entirely in the plane of mind or too entirely in the plane
+of spirit.
+
+In the early days, before Christianity came to bring its "sword upon
+earth," there seems to have been little or no consciousness of such a
+struggle. The ancient Hindu, observing Nature and meditating upon the
+universe, arrived intuitively at a perception of life and its processes
+wonderfully akin to that later experimentally proved by the nineteenth
+century scientist, nor did he have a suspicion that such truth was in any
+way antagonistic to religious truth. On the contrary, he considered that,
+by it, the beauty and mystery of religion was immeasurably enhanced, and,
+letting his imagination play upon his intuition, he brought forth a theory
+of spiritual evolution in which the world to-day is bound to recognize
+many elements of beauty and power necessary to any complete conception of
+religion in the future.
+
+Even the Babylonians made their guesses at an evolutionary theory of the
+universe. Greek philosophy, later, was permeated with the idea, it having
+been derived by them perhaps from the Chaldeans through the Phoenicians,
+or if the theories of Aryan migrations be correct, perhaps through
+inheritance from a remote Aryan ancestry.
+
+When Christian thought gained its hold upon the world, the account of
+creation given in Genesis became so thoroughly impressed upon the minds of
+men that it was regarded as the orthodox view, rooted in divine
+revelation, and to question it was to incur the danger of being called an
+atheist, with its possibly uncomfortable consequences of being martyred.
+
+Strangely enough, the early Church adopted into its fold many pagan
+superstitions, such as a belief in witchcraft and in signs and wonders, as
+well as some myths, but this great truth upon which the pagan mind had
+stumbled, it would have none of.
+
+These two circumstances--the adoption on the part of Christianity of pagan
+superstitions and its utter repudiation of the pagan guesses upon
+evolution, carrying within it the germs of truth, later to be unearthed by
+scientific research--furnished exactly the right conditions for the
+throwing down of the gauntlet between the mind and the spirit. The former,
+following intellectual guidance, found itself coming more and more into
+antagonism with the spirit, not yet freed from the trammels of
+imagination. The latter, guided by imagination, continued to exercise a
+mythopoeic faculty, which not only brought it more and more into
+antagonism with the mind, but set up within its own realm an internecine
+warfare which has blackened the pages of religious history with crimes and
+martyrdoms so terrible as to force the conviction that the true devil in
+antagonism to spiritual development has been the imagination of mankind,
+masquerading as verity, and not yet having found its true function in art.
+
+Regarded from the point of view of the student of intellectual
+development, this conflict of two thousand years has the fascination of a
+great drama of which the protagonist is the mind struggling to free the
+spirit from its subjection to the evil aspects of the imagination. Great
+thinkers in the field of science, philosophy, and religion are the
+_dramatis personae_, and in the onward rush of this world-drama the
+sufferings of those who have fallen by the way seem insignificant.
+
+But when the student of history takes his more intimate survey of the
+purely human aspects of the struggle, heartrending, indeed, become the
+tragedies resulting from the exercise of human bigotry and stupidity.
+
+Indignation and sorrow take possession of us when we think upon such a
+spectacle as that of Roger Bacon, making ready to perform a few scientific
+experiments before a small audience at Oxford, confronted by an uproar in
+which monks, fellows, and students rushed about, their garments streaming
+in the wind, crying out, "Down with the magician!" And this was only the
+beginning of a persecution which ended in his teaching being solemnly
+condemned by the authorities of the Franciscan order and himself thrown
+for fourteen years into prison, whence he issued an old and broken man of
+eighty.
+
+More barbarous still was the treatment of Giordano Bruno, a strange sort
+of man who developed his philosophy in about twenty-five works, some
+prose, some poetry, some dialogues, some comedies, with such enticing
+titles as "The Book of the Great Key," "The Explanation of the Thirty
+Seals," "The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast," "The Threefold
+Minimum," "The Composition of Images," "The Innumerable, the Immense and
+the Unfigurable." His utterances were vague, especially to the intellects
+of his time, yet not so vague that theology, whether Catholic or
+Calvinistic, did not at once take fright.
+
+He held that the investigation of nature in the unbiased light of reason
+is our only guide to truth. He rejected antiquity, tradition, faith, and
+authority; he exclaimed, "Let us begin by doubt. Let us doubt till we
+know." Acting upon these principles, he began to unfold again that current
+of Greek thought which the system imposed by the Church had intercepted
+for more than a thousand years, and arrived at a conception of evolution
+prefiguring the modern theories.
+
+He conceived the law of the universe to be unceasing change. "Each
+individual," he declared, "is the resultant of innumerable individuals;
+each species is the starting point for the next." Furthermore, he
+maintained that the perfecting of the individual soul is the aim of all
+progress.
+
+Tenets so opposite to the orthodox view of special creation and the fall
+of man could not be allowed to go unchallenged. It is to be remembered
+that he was a priest in holy orders in the Convent of St. Dominic, and in
+the year 1576 he was accused by the Provincial of his order of heresy on
+one hundred and thirty counts. He did not await his trial, but fled to
+Rome, thence to northern Italy, and became for some years a wanderer. He
+was imprisoned at Geneva; at Toulouse he spent a year lecturing on
+Aristotle; in Paris, two years as professor extraordinary in the Sorbonne;
+three years in London, where he became the friend of Sir Philip Sidney,
+and influenced the philosophy of both Bacon and Shakespeare. Oxford,
+however, was unfriendly to his teachings and he was obliged to flee from
+England also. Then he wandered for five years from city to city in
+Germany--at one time warned to leave the town, at another excommunicated,
+at another not even permitted to lodge within the gates. Finally, he
+accepted the invitation of a noble Venetian, Zuane Mocenigo, to visit
+Venice and teach him the higher and secret learning. The two men soon
+quarreled, and Bruno was betrayed by the count into the hands of the
+Inquisition. He was convicted of heresy in Venice and delivered to the
+Inquisition in Rome. He spent seven years in its dungeons, and was again
+tried and convicted, and called upon to recant, which he stoutly refused
+to do. Sentence of death was then passed upon him and he was burned at the
+stake on February 17, 1600, on the Campo de' Fiori, where there now stands
+a statue erected by Progressive Italy in his honor.
+
+His last words were, "I die a martyr, and willingly." Then they cast his
+ashes into the Tiber and placed his name among the accused on the rolls of
+the Church. And there it probably still remains, for no longer ago than
+1889, when his statue was unveiled on the ninth of June, on the site of
+his burning, in full view of the Vatican, Pope Leo XIII, it is said,
+refused food and spent hours in an agony of prayer at the foot of the
+statue of St. Peter. Catholic, and even Protestant, denunciation of Bruno
+at this time showed that the smoke from this particular battle in the war
+of mind with spirit was still far from being laid.
+
+With the fate of Giordano Bruno still fresh in his mind, Galileo succumbed
+to the demands of the Inquisition and recanted, saying that he no longer
+believed what he, himself, with his telescope had proved to be true.
+
+    "I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner and on my
+    knees, and before your Eminences, having before my eyes the Holy
+    Gospel, which I touch with my hands, abjure, curse, and detest the
+    error and the heresy of the movement of the earth."
+
+If this recantation had brought any comfort or peace into his life it
+might have been hard to forgive Galileo's perjury of himself. His
+persecution, however, continued to the end. He was exiled from his family
+and friends, and, even when he had become blind and wasted by sorrow and
+disease, he was still closely watched lest he might utter the awful heresy
+that the earth moved.
+
+A hundred years later than this, when Buffon attempted to teach the simple
+truths of geology, he was deposed from his high position and made to
+recant by the theological faculty of the Sorbonne. The man who promulgated
+geological principles, as firmly established to-day as that of the
+rotation of the earth upon its axis, was forced to write: "I declare that
+I had no intention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I believe
+most firmly all therein related about the creation, both as to order of
+time and matter of fact. I abandon everything in my book respecting the
+formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary to the
+narrative of Moses."
+
+Such are the more heinous examples of the persecution of the men who
+discovered the truths of science. To these should be added the wholesale
+persecution of witches and magicians, for unusual knowledge of any sort
+ran the chance of being regarded as contrary to biblical teaching and of
+being attributed to the machinations of the Prince of Darkness.
+
+Every new step made in the direction of scientific truth has had thus to
+face the most determined opposition. Persecution by torture and death died
+out, but up to the nineteenth century, and well on through it,
+denunciation, excommunication, suppression, the loss of honorable
+positions have all been used as weapons by church or university in the
+attempt to stamp out whatever it considered dangerous and subverting
+doctrines of science.
+
+The decisive battle was not to be inaugurated until the latter half of the
+nineteenth century, with the advent in the field of such names in science
+as Spencer, Darwin, Tyndall and Huxley, and such names in biblical
+criticism as Strauss and Renan.
+
+The outposts, it is true, had been won by advancing scientific thought,
+for step by step the Church had compromised, and had admitted one
+scientific doctrine after another as not incompatible with biblical truth.
+But now, not only theology, the imperfect armor in which the spirit had
+been clothed, was attacked, but the very existence of spirit itself was to
+be questioned. The thinking world was to be divided into materialists and
+supernaturalists. Now, at last, mind and spirit, who in the ages long gone
+had been brothers, were to stand face to face as enemies. Was this mortal
+combat to end in the annihilation of either, or would this, too, end in a
+compromise leading to harmony?
+
+At the dawn of this century, in 1812, came into the world its master
+poetic mind. I say this to-day without hesitation, for no other English
+poet of the century has been so thoroughly aware of the intellectual
+tendencies of his century, and has so emotionalized them and brought them
+before us under the humanly real conditions of dramatic utterance.
+
+It is not surprising, considering this fact, that in his second poem,
+written in 1835, Browning ventures into the arena and at once tackles the
+supreme problem of the age, what is to be the relation of mind and spirit?
+
+It is characteristic of the poetic methods, which dominated his work, that
+he should have presented this problem through the personality of a
+historical figure who played no inconsiderable part in the intellectual
+development of his time, though not a man to whom general historians have
+been in the habit of assigning much space in their pages. Browning,
+however, as Hall Griffin informs us, had been familiar with the name of
+Paracelsus from his childhood, of whom he had read anecdotes in a queer
+book, Wanley's "Wonders of the Little World." Besides, his father's
+library, wherein as a boy he was wont to browse constantly, contained the
+_Opera Omnia_ of Paracelsus.
+
+With the confidence of youth and of genius the poet attempts in this poem
+a solution of the problem. To mind he gives the attribute of knowledge, to
+spirit the attribute of love.
+
+The poem as a whole does not concern us here except as a background for
+its final thoughts. In order, however, to put the situation clearly before
+readers not already familiar with it, I venture to transcribe a portion of
+a former analysis of my own.
+
+Paracelsus aspires to the acquisition of absolute knowledge and feels born
+within him the capabilities for attaining this end, and, when attained, it
+is to be devoted to enlarging the possibilities of man's life. The whole
+race is to be elevated at once. Man may not be doomed to cope with
+seraphs, yet by the exercise of human strength alone he hopes man may one
+day beat God's angels.
+
+He is a revolter, however, against the magical and alchemistic methods of
+his age, which seek for the welfare of men through the elixir of youth or
+the philosopher's stone. He especially disclaims such puerile schemes in
+the passionate moment when he has realized how futile all his lifelong
+efforts have been. He stands, indeed, at the threshold of a new world. He
+has a glimmering of the true scientific methods which would discover first
+the secrets of life's laws, and then use these natural laws to bring about
+life's betterment, instead of hoping for salvation through the discovery
+of some magic secret by means of which life's laws might be overcome. Yet
+he is sufficiently of his own superstitious age to desire and expect
+fairly magical results from the laws he hopes to discover. The creed which
+spurs him to his quest is his belief that truth is inborn in the soul, but
+to set this truth free and make it of use to mankind correspondences in
+outer nature must be found. An intuitive mind like Paracelsus's will
+recognize these natural corollaries of the intuition wherever it finds
+them; and these are what Paracelsus goes forth over the earth to seek
+and find, sure he will "arrive." One illustration of the results so
+obtained is seen in the doctrine of the signatures of plants according to
+which the flowers, leaves, and fruits of plants indicate by their color or
+markings, etc., the particular diseases they are intended to cure. The
+real Paracelsus practised medicine upon this theory.
+
+Though such methods are a long distance from those of the modern
+scientist, who deduces his laws from careful and patient observation of
+nature, they go a step toward his in seeking laws in nature to correspond
+to hypotheses born of intuition.
+
+Browning's presentation of the attitude of mind and the place held by
+Paracelsus in the development of science is exactly in line with the most
+recent criticisms of this extraordinary man's life. According to these he
+fluctuated between the systems of magic then prevalent and scientific
+observation, but always finally threw in the balance of his opinion on the
+side of scientific ways of working; and above all made the great step from
+a belief in the influence of nature upon man to that of the existence of
+parallelisms between nature processes and human processes.
+
+Though he thus opened up new vistas for the benefit of man, he must
+necessarily be a failure, from his own point of view, with his "India" not
+found, his absolute truth unattained; and it is upon this side that the
+poet dwells. For a moment he is somewhat reassured by the apparition of
+Aprile, scarcely a creature of flesh and blood, more the spirit of art who
+aspires to love infinitely and has found the attainment of such love as
+impossible as Paracelsus has found the attainment of knowledge. Both have
+desired to help men, but Paracelsus has desired to help them rather
+through the perfecting, even immortalizing, of their physical being;
+Aprile, through giving man, as he is, infinite sympathy and through
+creating forms of beauty which would show him his own thoughts and hopes
+glorified by the all-seeing touch of the artist.
+
+Paracelsus recognizes his deficient sympathy for mankind, and tries to
+make up for it in his own way by giving out of the fulness of his
+knowledge to men. The scornful and proud reformer has not, however, truly
+learned the lesson of love, and verily has his reward when he is turned
+against by those whom he would teach. Then the old ideal seizes upon him
+again, and still under the influence of Aprile he seeks in human
+experience the loves and passions of mankind which he learns through
+Aprile he had neglected for the ever-illusive secret, but neither does
+success attend him here, and only on his deathbed does his vision clear
+up, and he is made to indulge in a prophetic utterance quite beyond the
+reach of the original Paracelsus.
+
+In this passage is to be found Browning's first contribution to a solution
+of the great problem. That it is instinct with the idea of evolution has
+become a commonplace of Browning criticism, a fact which was at least
+independently or, as far as I know, first pointed out by myself in an
+early essay upon Browning. At the time, I was reading both Browning and
+Spencer, and could not but be impressed by the parallelisms in thought
+between the two, especially those in this seer-like passage and "The Data
+of Ethics."
+
+Writers whose appreciation of a poet is in direct ratio to the number of
+exact historical facts to be found in a poem like to emphasize this fact
+that the doctrine of evolution can be found in the works of Paracelsus.
+Why not? Since, as we have seen it had been floating about in
+philosophical thought in one form or another for some thousands of years.
+
+Indeed, it has been stated upon good authority that the idea of a gradual
+evolution according to law and of a God from whom all being emanates,
+from whom all power proceeds, is an inherent necessity of the Aryan mind
+as opposed to the Semitic idea of an outdwelling God and of
+supernaturalism. Thus, all down the ages the Aryan mind has revolted from
+time to time against the religious ideas superimposed upon it by the
+Semitic mind. This accounts for the numerous heresies within the bosom of
+the Church as well as for the scientific advance against the superstitions
+of the Church.
+
+Generalizations of this sweeping order are apt to contain only partial
+truth. It would probably be nearer the whole truth, as we are enabled
+to-day to trace historical development, to say that, starting with
+opposite conceptions, these two orders of mind have worked toward each
+other and the harmonization of their respective points of view, and,
+furthermore, that this difference in mind belongs to a period prior even
+to the emergence of the Aryan or the Semitic. Researches in mythology and
+folklore seem to indicate that no matter how far back one may go in the
+records of human thought there will be found these two orders of mind--one
+which naturally thinks of the universe as the outcome of law, and one
+which naturally thinks of it as the outcome of creation. There are
+primitive myths in which mankind is supposed to be descended from a
+primitive ancestor, which may range all the way from a serpent to an oak
+tree, or, as in a certain Zulu myth, a bed of reeds growing on the back of
+a small animal. And there are equally primitive myths in which mankind is
+created out of the trees or the earth by an external agent, varying in
+importance from a grasshopper to a more or less spiritual being.
+
+Browning did not need to depend upon Paracelsus for his knowledge of
+evolution. He may not have known that the ancient Hindu in the dim mists
+of the past had an intuition of the cosmic egg from which all life had
+evolved, and that he did not know of the theory as it is developed in the
+great German philosophers we are certain, because he, himself, asseverated
+that he had never read the German philosophers, but it is hardly possible
+that he did not know something of it as it appears in the writings of the
+Greek philosophers, for Greek literature was among the earliest of his
+studies. He might, for instance, have taken a hint from the speculations
+of that half mythical marvel of a man, Empedocles, with which the
+Paracelsus theory of the universe, as it appears in the passage under
+discussion, has many points of contact.
+
+According to Empedocles, the four primal elements, earth, air, fire and
+water, are worked upon by the forces of love and discord. By means of
+these forces, out of the primal elements are evolved various and horrible
+monstrosities before the final form of perfection is reached. It is true
+he did not correctly imagine the stages in the processes of evolution, for
+instead of a gradual development of one form from another, he describes
+the process as a haphazard and chaotic one. "Many heads sprouted up
+without necks, and naked arms went wandering forlorn of shoulders, and
+solitary eyes were straying destitute of foreheads." These detached
+portions of bodies coming together by haphazard produced the earlier
+monstrous forms. "Many came forth with double faces and two breasts, some
+shaped like oxen with a human front, others, again, of human race with a
+bull's head." However, the latter part of the evolutionary process as
+described by Empedocles, when Love takes command, seems especially
+pertinent as a possible source of Browning's thought:
+
+    "When strife has reached the very bottom of the seething mass, and
+    love assumes her station in the center of the ball, then everything
+    begins to come together, and to form one whole--not instantaneously,
+    but different substances come forth, according to a steady process of
+    development. Now, when these elements are mingling, countless kinds of
+    things issue from their union. Much, however, remains unmixed, in
+    opposition to the mingling elements, and these, malignant strife still
+    holds within his grasp. For he has not yet withdrawn himself
+    altogether to the extremities of the globe; but part of his limbs
+    still remain within its bounds, and part have passed beyond. As
+    strife, however, step by step retreats, mild and innocent love pursues
+    him with her force divine; things which had been immortal instantly
+    assume mortality; the simple elements become confused by interchange
+    of influences. When these are mingled, then the countless kinds of
+    mortal beings issue forth, furnished with every sort of form--a sight
+    of wonder."
+
+Though evolution was no new idea, it had been only a hypothesis arrived at
+intuitionally or suggested by crude observations of nature until by
+perfected methods of historical study and of scientific experimentation
+proof was furnished of its truth as a scientific verity.
+
+Let us glance at the situation at the time when Paracelsus was published.
+In 1835 science had made great strides in the direction of proving the
+correctness of the hypothesis. Laplace had lived and died and had given to
+the world in mathematical reasoning of remarkable power proof of the
+nebular hypothesis, which was later to be verified by Fraunhofer's
+discoveries in spectrum analysis. Lamarck had lived and died and had
+given to the world his theory of animal evolution. Lyall in England had
+shown that geological formations were evolutionary rather than
+cataclysmal. In fact, greater and lesser scientific lights in England and
+on the continent were every day adding fresh facts to the burden of proof
+in favor of the hypothesis. It was in the air, and denunciations of it
+were in the air.
+
+Most interesting of all, however, in connection with our present theme is
+the fact that Herbert Spencer was still a lad of fifteen, who was
+independently of Darwin to work out a complete philosophy of evolution,
+which was to be applied in every department of cosmic, geologic, plant,
+animal and human activity, but (and this is of special interest) he was
+not to give to the world his plan for a synthetic philosophy until 1860,
+and not to publish his "First Principles" until 1862, nor the first
+instalment of the "Data of Ethics," the fruit of his whole system, until
+1879.
+
+Besides being familiar with the idea as it crops out in Greek thought, it
+is impossible that the young Browning was not cognizant of the scientific
+attitude of the time. In fact, he tells us as much himself, for when
+Doctor Wonivall asked him some questions as to his attitude toward Darwin,
+Browning responded in a letter: "In reality all that seems proved in
+Darwin's scheme was a conception familiar to me from the beginning."
+
+Entirely familiar with the evolutionary idea, then, however he may have
+derived it, it is just what might be expected that he should have worked
+it into Paracelsus's final theory of life. The remarkable thing is that he
+should have applied its principles in so masterly a fashion--namely, that
+he should have made a complete philosophical synthesis by bringing the
+idea of evolution to bear upon all natural, human and spiritual processes
+of growth twenty-five years before Herbert Spencer, who is regarded on
+this particular ground as the master mind of the century, gave his
+synthetic philosophy of evolution to the world.
+
+A momentary glance at the passage in question will make this clear.
+Paracelsus traces first development as illustrated in geological forms:
+
+    "The center-fire heaves underneath the earth,
+  And the earth changes like a human face;
+  The molten one bursts up among the rocks,
+  Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright
+  In hidden mines, spots barren river beds,
+  Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask."
+
+Next he touches upon plant life and animal life. The grass grows bright,
+the boughs are swollen with blooms, ants make their ado, birds fly in
+merry flocks, the strand is purple with its tribe of nested limpets,
+savage creatures seek their loves in wood and plain. Then he shows how in
+all this animal life are scattered attributes foreshadowing a being that
+will combine them. Then appears primitive man, only half enlightened, who
+gains knowledge through the slow, uncertain fruit of toil, whose love is
+not serenely pure, but strong from weakness, a love which endures and
+doubts and is oppressed. And out of the travail of the human soul as it
+proceeds from lower to higher forms is finally evolved self-conscious
+man--man who consciously looks back upon all that has preceded him and
+interprets nature by means of his own human perceptions. The winds are
+henceforth voices, wailing or a shout, a querulous mutter or a quick, gay
+laugh, never a senseless gust, now man is born.
+
+But development does not end with the attainment of this
+self-consciousness. After this stage has been reached there continues an
+evolution which is distinctively spiritual, a tendency to God. Browning
+was not content with the evolution of man, he was prophetic of the final
+flowering of man in the superman, although he had never heard of
+Nietszche.
+
+The corollary to this progressive theory of life, a view held by
+scientific thinkers, is that sin is not depravity, but is merely a lack of
+development. Paracelsus is therefore made wise to know even hate is but a
+mask of love, to see a good in evil, a hope in ill-success, to sympathize,
+even be proud of man's half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim struggles for
+truth--all with a touch of nobleness despite their error, upward tending
+all, though weak.
+
+Though there are points of contact between the thought of the true
+Paracelsus and of Browning, the points of contact between Spencer and
+Browning are far more significant, for Browning seems intuitively to have
+perceived the fundamental truths of social and psychic evolution at the
+early age of twenty-three--truths which the philosopher worked out only
+after years of laborious study.
+
+We, who, to-day, are familiar with the application of the theory of
+evolution to every object from a dustpan to a flying machine, can hardly
+throw ourselves into the atmosphere of the first half of the last century
+when this dynamic ideal was flung into a world with static ideals. The
+Christian world knew little and cared less about the guesses of Greek
+philosophers, whom they regarded when they did know about them as
+unregenerate pagans. German thought was caviare to the general, and what
+new thought of a historical or scientific nature made its way into the
+strongholds of conservatism filled people with suspicion and dread. Such a
+sweeping synthesis, therefore, as Browning gives of dawning scientific
+theories in Paracelsus was truly phenomenal. That it did not prove a bone
+of contention and arouse controversies as hot as those which were waged
+later around such scientific leaders as Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, and
+Clifford was probably due to the circumstance that the poem was little
+read and less understood, and also to the fact that it contained other
+elements which overlaid the bare presentation of the doctrines of
+evolution.
+
+So far I have spoken only of the form of the Paracelsus theory of life,
+but a theory of life to be complete must have soul as well as form. Only
+in adding the soul side to his theory of life does Browning really give
+his solution of the problem, what is to be the relation of mind and
+spirit?
+
+One other point of resemblance is to be noted between the thought of
+Browning's Paracelsus and Herbert Spencer. They agree that ultimate
+knowledge is beyond the grasp of the intellect. Neither was this a new
+idea; but up to the time of Spencer it was taken simply as a negative
+conclusion. Spencer, however, having found this negation makes it the body
+of his philosophy--a body so shadowy that many of his critics consider it
+too ghostly to stand as a substantial basis for philosophical thought. He
+regards the failure of the intellect to picture the nature of the absolute
+as the most certain proof that our intuitions of its existence are
+trustworthy, and upon this he bases all religious aspiration. Like the
+psalmist, he exclaims, "Who by searching can find out God?"
+
+The attitude of Paracelsus is identical as far as the intellect is
+concerned. His life, spent in the search for knowledge, had proved it to
+him. But he does not, like Spencer, make it the body of his philosophy.
+Through the influence of Aprile he is led to a definite conception of the
+Infinite as a Being whose especial characteristic is that he feels!--feels
+unbounded joy in his own creations. This is eminently an artist's or
+poet's perception of the relation of God to his universe. As Aprile in one
+place says, "God is the perfect poet, who in his person acts his own
+creations."
+
+As I have already pointed out, the evil of pain, of decay, of degeneration
+is taken no account of.
+
+There is the constant passing onward from joy to joy. All the processes of
+nature from the simplest to the most complex bring, in their turn, a
+delight to their Creator until man appears, and is not only a joy to his
+Creator, but is the first in the order of creation to share in the joy of
+existence, the first to arrive at the full consciousness of beauty. So
+overwhelming is this consciousness of beauty that man perceives it
+struggling for expression in the hates and fallacies of undeveloped
+natures.
+
+All this is characteristic of the artistic way of looking at life. The
+artist is prone either to ignore the ugly or to transmute it by art into
+something possessing beauty of power if not of loveliness. What are plays
+like "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," "Brand" and "Peer Gynt," music like "Tristan
+and Isolde" or the "Pathetic Symphony," Rodin's statues, but actual,
+palpable realizations of the fact that hate is but a mask of love, or that
+human fallacies and human passions have within them the seeds of immense
+beauty if only there appear the artist who can bring them forth. If this
+is true of the human artist, how much more is it true of the divine
+artist in whose shadow, as Pompilia says, even a Guido may find healing.
+
+The optimism of such a theory of existence is intoxicating. Not only does
+this artist-man look backward and rejoice in all the beauty of past phases
+of creation, but he looks forward to endless progression in the enjoyment
+of fresh phases of beauty--"a flying point of bliss remote." This is a
+universe in which the Prometheus of the old myths is indeed unbound.
+Mankind is literally free to progress forever upward. If there are some
+men in darkness, they are like plants in mines struggling to break out
+into the sunlight they see beyond.
+
+The interesting question arises here, was Browning, himself, entirely
+responsible for the soul of his Paracelsus theory of life or was there
+some source beyond him from which he drew inspiration?
+
+It has frequently been suggested that Aprile in this poem is a sort of
+symbolic representation of Shelley. Why not rather a composite of both
+Shelley and Keats, the poet of love and the poet of beauty? An examination
+of the greatest poems of these two writers, "Prometheus Unbound" and
+"Hyperion," will bring out the elements in both which I believe entered
+into Browning's conception.
+
+In the exalted symbolism of the "Prometheus Unbound" Shelley shows that,
+in his view, evil and suffering were not inherent in the nature of things,
+the tyranny of evil having gained its ascendancy through the persistence
+of out-worn ideals, such as that of Power or Force symbolized in the Greek
+idea of Jupiter. Prometheus is the revolting mind of mankind, enslaved by
+the tyranny of Jupiter, hating the tyrant, yet determined to endure all
+the tyrant can inflict upon him rather than admit his right to rule. The
+freeing of Prometheus and the dethronement of Jupiter come through the
+awakening in the heart of Prometheus of pity for the tyrant--that is,
+Prometheus has learned to love his enemies as he loves his friends. The
+remainder of the poem is occupied with showing the effects upon humanity
+of this universal awakening of love.
+
+In the fine passage where the Spirit of the Earth hears the trumpet of the
+Spirit of the Hour sound in a great city, it beholds all ugly human shapes
+and visages which had caused it pain pass floating through the air, and
+fading still
+
+  "Into the winds that scattered them, and those
+  From whom they passed seemed mild and lovely forms
+  After some foul disguise had fallen, and all
+  Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise
+  And greetings of delighted wonder, all
+  Went to their sleep again."
+
+And the Spirit of the Hour relates:
+
+  "Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled
+  The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,
+  There was a change: the impalpable thin air
+  And the all-circling sunlight were transformed
+  As if the sense of love dissolved in them
+  Had folded itself around the sphered world."
+
+In the meantime, the over-souls of humanity--Prometheus, symbolic of
+thought or knowledge, is reunited to Asia, his spouse, symbolic of Nature
+or emotion, from whom he has long been separated and together with Asia's
+sisters, Panthea and Ione--retire to the wonderful cave where they are
+henceforth to dwell and where their occupations are inspired by the most
+childlike and exalted moods of the soul.
+
+Before considering the bearing of their life of love and art in the cave
+upon the character of Aprile let us turn our attention for a moment to a
+remarkable passage in "Hyperion," which poem was written as far back as
+1820. Keats, like Shelley, deals with the dethronement of gods, but it
+is the older dynasty of Titans--Saturn and Hyperion usurped by Jupiter and
+Apollo. Shelley's thought in the "Prometheus" is strongly influenced by
+Christian ideals, but Keats's is thoroughly Greek.
+
+The passing of one series of gods and the coming into power of another
+series of gods was a familiar idea in Greek mythology. It reflected at
+once the literal fact that ever higher and higher forces of nature had
+been deified by them, beginning with crude Nature gods and ending with
+symbols of the most ideal human attributes, and at the same time that
+their thought leaned in the direction of interpreting nature as an
+evolutionary process. Seizing upon this, Keats has presented in the words
+of the old Titan Oceanus a theory of the evolution of beauty quite as
+startling as a prophecy of psychological theories upon this subject as
+Browning's is of cosmic and social theories. Addressing Saturn, Oceanus
+says:
+
+  "We fall by course of Nature's law, not force
+  Of thunder, or of love....
+    ... As thou wast not the first of powers
+  So art thou not the last; it cannot be:
+  From chaos and parental darkness came
+  Light, the first fruits of that intestine broil,
+  That sullen ferment, which for wondrous ends
+  Was ripening in itself. The ripe hour came
+  And with it light, and light, engendering
+  Upon its own producer, forthwith touched,
+  The whole enormous matter into life.
+  Upon that very hour, our parentage
+  The Heavens and the Earth were manifest;
+  Then thou first-born, and we the giant-race,
+  Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+  As Heaven and Earth are fairer far
+  Than chaos and blank darkness, though once chiefs,
+  And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth
+  In form and shape compact and beautiful,
+  In will, in action free, companionship
+  And thousand other signs of purer life,
+  So on our heels a fresh perfection treads,
+  A power more strong in beauty, born of us
+  And fated to excel us, as we pass
+  In glory that old darkness: nor are we
+  Thereby more conquered than by us the rule
+  Of shapeless chaos. For 'tis the eternal law
+  That first in beauty should be first in might.
+  Yea, by that law, another race may drive
+  Our conquerors to mourn as we do now."
+
+There is in the attitude of Oceanus a magnificent acceptance of this
+ruthless course of nature reminding one of that taken by such men as
+Huxley and Clifford in the face of their own scientific discoveries, but
+one is immediately struck by the absence of love in the idea. An Apollo,
+no matter what new beauty he may have, himself, to offer, who yet
+disregards the beauty of Hyperion and calmly accepts the throne of the sun
+in his stead, does not satisfy us. What unreason it is that so splendid a
+being as Hyperion should be deposed! As a matter of fact, he was not
+deposed. He is left standing forever in our memories in splendor like the
+morn, for Keats did not finish the poem and no picture of the enthroned
+Apollo is given. Perhaps Keats remembered his earlier utterance, "A thing
+of beauty is a joy forever," and cared for his own Hyperion too much to
+banish him for the sake of Apollo.
+
+Be that as it may, the points in relation to our subject are that
+Shelley's emphasis is upon the conservation of beauty, while Keats's
+emphasis is upon the evolution of new beauty.
+
+In the cave where Prometheus and Asia dwell--the cave of universal
+spirit--is given forth the inspiration to humanity for painting, poetry
+and arts, yet to be born, and all these arts return to delight them,
+fashioned into form by human artists. Love is the ruling principle.
+Therefore all forms of beautiful art are immortal. Aprile,[1] as he
+first appears, is an elaboration upon this idea. He would love all
+humanity with such intensity that he would immortalize in all forms of
+art--painting, poetry, music--every thought and emotion of which the human
+soul is capable, and this done he would say:
+
+                            "His spirits created--
+  God grants to each a sphere to be its world,
+  Appointed with the various objects needed
+  To satisfy its own peculiar want;
+  So, I create a world for these my shapes
+  Fit to sustain their beauty and their strength."
+
+In short, he would found a universal art museum exactly like the cave in
+which Prometheus dwelt. The stress is no more than it is in Shelley upon a
+search for new beauty, and there is not a hint that a coming beauty shall
+blot out the old until Aprile recognizes Paracelsus as his king. Then he
+awakes to the fact that his own ideal has been partial, because he has
+not been a seeker after knowledge, or new beauty, and in much the same
+spirit as Oceanus, he exclaims:
+
+  "Lo, I forget my ruin, and rejoice
+  In thy success, as thou! Let our God's praise
+  Go bravely through the world at last! What care
+  Through me or thee?"
+
+But Paracelsus had learned a lesson through Aprile which the Apollo of
+Keats had not learned. He does not accept kingship at the expense of
+Aprile as Apollo would do at the expense of Hyperion. He includes in his
+final theory of life all that is beautiful in Aprile's or Shelley's ideal
+and adds to it all that is beautiful of the Keats ideal. The form of his
+philosophy is evolutionary, and up to the time of his meeting with Aprile
+had expressed itself as the search for knowledge. Through Aprile his
+philosophy becomes imbued with soul, the attributes of which are the
+spirit of love and the spirit of beauty, one of which conserves and
+immortalizes beauty, the other of which searches out new beauty.
+
+So, working hand in hand, they become one, while the search for knowledge,
+thus spiritualized, becomes the search for beauty always inspired by love.
+The aim of the evolutionary process thus becomes the unfolding of ever
+new phases of beauty in which God takes endless delight, and to the final
+enjoyment of which mankind shall attain.
+
+To sum up, Browning's solution of the problem in the Paracelsus theory of
+life is reached not only through a synthesis of the doctrines of evolution
+as applied to universal activities, cosmic and human, prophetic, on the
+one hand, of the most advanced scientific thought of the century, but it
+is a synthesis of these and of the art-spirit in its twofold aspect of
+love and beauty as already expressed in the poetry of Shelley and Keats.
+
+It is not in the least probable that Browning set to work consciously to
+piece together these ideals. That is not the method of the artist! But
+being familiar to him in the two best beloved poets of his youth, they had
+sunk into his very being, and welled forth from his own subconsciousness,
+charged with personal emotion, partly dramatic, partly the expression of
+his own true feeling at the time, and the result be it said is one of the
+most inspiring and beautiful passages in English poetry.
+
+[Illustration: PARACELSUS]
+
+At the end of his life and the end of the century Herbert Spencer, who had
+spent years of labor to prove the fallacies in all religious dogmas, and
+who had insisted upon religion's being entirely relegated to
+intellectually unknowable regions of thought, spoke in his autobiography
+of the mysteries inherent in life, in the evolution of human beings, in
+consciousness, in human destiny--mysteries that the very advance of
+science makes more and more evident, exhibits as more and more profound
+and impenetrable, adding:
+
+    "Thus religious creeds, which in one way or other occupy the sphere
+    that rational interpretation seeks to occupy and fails, and fails the
+    more, the more it seeks, I have come to regard with a sympathy based
+    on community of need: feeling that dissent from them results from
+    inability to accept the solutions offered, joined with the wish that
+    solutions could be found."
+
+Loyal to the last to his determination to accept as knowledge only what
+the intellect could prove, he never permitted himself to come under the
+awakening influence of an Aprile, yet like Browning's ancient Greek,
+Cleon, he longed for a solution of the mystery.
+
+At the dawn of the century, and in his youth, Browning ventured upon a
+solution. In the remainder of this and the next chapter I shall attempt to
+show what elements in this solution the poet retained to the end of his
+life, how his thought became modified, and what relation his final
+solution bears to the final thought of the century.
+
+In this first attempt at a synthesis of life in which the attributes
+peculiar to the mind and to the spirit are brought into harmonious
+relationship, Browning is more the intuitionalist than the scientist. His
+convictions well forth with all the force of an inborn revelation, just as
+kindred though much less rational views of nature's processes sprang up in
+the mind of the ancient Hindu or the ancient Greek.
+
+The philosophy of life herein flashed out by the poet was later to be
+elaborated fully on its objective or observational side by Spencer--the
+philosopher par excellence of evolution--and finally, also, of course, on
+the objective side, to become an assured fact of science through the
+publication in 1859 of Darwin's epoch-making book, "The Origin of
+Species," wherein the laws, so disturbing to many at the time, of natural
+selection and the survival of the fittest were fully set forth.
+
+While the genetic view of nature, as the phraseology of to-day goes, had
+been anticipated in writers on cosmology like Leibnitz and Laplace, in
+geology by such men as Hutton and Lyall, and had entered into the domain
+of embryology through the researches of Von Baer, and while Spencer had
+already formulated a philosophy of evolution, Darwin went out into the
+open and studied the actual facts in the domain of living beings. His
+studies made evolution a certainty. They revealed the means by which its
+processes were accomplished, and in so doing pointed to an origin of man
+entirely opposed to orthodox views upon this subject. Thus was inaugurated
+the last great phase in the struggle between mind and spirit.
+
+Henceforth, science stood completely revealed as the unflinching searcher
+of truth. Intuition was but a handmaid whose duty was to formulate working
+hypotheses, to become scientific law if provable by investigation or
+experiment, to be discarded if not.
+
+The aspects which this battle has assumed in the latter half of the
+century have been many and various. Older sciences with a new lease of
+life and sciences entirely new have advanced along the path pointed out by
+the doctrines of evolution. Battalions of determined men have held aloft
+the banner of uncompromising truth. Each battalion has stormed truth's
+citadel only to find that about its inmost reality is an impregnable wall.
+The utmost which has been attained in any case is a working hypothesis,
+useful in bringing to light many new objective phenomena, it is true,
+but, in the end, serving only to deepen the mystery inherent in the nature
+of all things.
+
+Such a working hypothesis was the earlier one of gravitation whose laws of
+action were elaborated by Sir Isaac Newton, and by the great mind of
+Laplace were still further developed with marvelous mathematical precision
+in his "Mechanique Celeste."
+
+Such another hypothesis is that of the atomic theory of the constitution
+of matter usually associated with the name of Dalton, though it has
+undergone many modifications from other scientific thinkers. Of this
+hypothesis Theodore Merz writes in his history of nineteenth-century
+scientific thought:
+
+    "As to the nature of the differences of the elements, the atomic view
+    gives no information; it simply asserts these differences, assumes
+    them as physical constants, and tries to describe them by number and
+    measurement. The atomic view is therefore at best only a provisional
+    basis, a convenient resting place, similar to that which Newton found
+    in physical astronomy, and on which has been established the
+    astronomical view of nature."
+
+The vibratory theories of the ether, the theories of the conservation of
+energy, the vitalistic view of life, the theory of parallelism of physical
+and psychical phenomena are all such hypotheses. They have been of
+incalculable value in helping to a larger knowledge of the appearances of
+things, and in the formation of laws of action and reaction, but in no way
+have they aided in revealing the inner or transcendent realities of the
+myriad manifestations of nature and life!
+
+During the last half of the century this truth has forced itself with ever
+increasing power upon the minds of scientists, and has resulted in many
+divisions among the ranks. Some rest upon phenomena as the final reality;
+hence materialistic or mechanical views of life. Some believe that the
+only genuine reality is the one undiscoverable by science; hence new
+presentations of metaphysical views of life.
+
+During these decades the solid phalanx of religious believers has
+continued to watch from its heights with more or less of fear the advance
+of science. Here, too, there has been division in the ranks. Many
+denounced the scientists as the destroyers of religion; others like the
+good Bishop Colenso could write such words as these in 1873: "Bless God
+devoutly for the gift of modern science"; and who ten years earlier had
+expressed satisfaction in the fact that superstitious belief in the letter
+of the Bible was giving way to a true appreciation of the real value of
+the ancient Hebrew Scriptures as containing the dawn of religious light.
+
+From another quarter came the critical students of the Bible, who
+subjected its contents to the keen tests of historical and archaeological
+study. Serene, above all the turmoil, was the small band of genuine
+philosophers who, like Browning's own musician, Abt Vogler, knew the very
+truth. No matter what disturbing facts may be brought to light by science,
+be it man's descent from Anthropoids or a mechanical view of sensation,
+they continue to dwell unshaken in the light of a transcendent truth which
+reaches them through some other avenue than that of the mind.
+
+Browning belonged by nature in this last group. Already in "Sordello" his
+attention is turned to the development of the soul, and from that time on
+to the end of his career he is the champion of the soul-side of existence
+with all that it implies of character development--"little else being
+worth study," as he declared in his introduction to a second edition of
+the poem written twenty years after its first appearance.
+
+On this rock, the human soul, he takes his stand, and, though all the
+complex waves of the tempest of nineteenth-century thought break against
+his feet, he remains firm.
+
+Beginning with "Sordello," it is no longer evolution as applied to every
+aspect of the universe but evolution as applied to the human spirit which
+has his chief interest. Problems growing out of the marvelous developments
+of such sciences as astronomy, geology, physics, chemistry or biology do
+not enter into the main body of the poet's thought, though there are
+allusions many and exact which show his familiarity with the growth of
+these various objective sciences during his life.
+
+During all the middle years of his poetic career the relations of the mind
+and the spirit seemed to fascinate Browning, especially upon the side of
+the problems connected with the supernatural bases of religious
+experience. These are the problems which grew out of that phase of
+scholarly advance represented by biblical criticism.
+
+Such a poem as "Saul," for example, though full of a humanity and
+tenderness, as well as of a sheer poetic beauty, which endear it alike to
+those who appreciate little more than the content of the poem, and to
+those whose appreciation is that of the connoisseur in poetic art, is
+nevertheless an interpretation of the origin of prophecy, especially of
+the Messianic idea, which places Browning in the van of the thought of the
+century on questions connected with biblical criticism.
+
+At the time when "Saul" was written, 1845, modern biblical criticism had
+certainly gained very little hearing in England, for even as late as 1862
+Bishop Colenso's enlightened book on the Pentateuch was received, as one
+writer expresses it, with "almost unanimous disapprobation and widespread
+horror."
+
+Critics of the Bible there had been since the seventeenth century, but
+they had produced a confused mass of stuff in their attacks upon the
+authenticity of the Bible against which the orthodox apologists had
+succeeded in holding their own. At the end of the eighteenth and the dawn
+of the nineteenth century came the more systematic criticism of German
+scholars, echoes of whose theories found their way into England through
+the studies of such men as Pusey. But these, though they gave full
+consideration to the foremost of the German critics of the day, ranged
+themselves, for the most part, on the side of orthodoxy.
+
+Eichhorn, one of the first of the Germans to be studied in England, had
+found a point of departure in the celebrated "Wolfenbuettel Fragments,"
+which had been printed by Lessing from manuscripts by an unknown writer
+Reimarus discovered in the Wolfenbuettel library. These fragments represent
+criticism of the sweepingly destructive order, characteristic of what has
+been called the naturalistic school. Although Eichhorn agreed with the
+writer of the "Fragments" that the biblical narratives should be divested
+of all their supernatural aspects, he did not interpret the supernatural
+elements as simply frauds designed to deceive in order that personal ends
+might be gained. He restored dignity to the narrative by insisting at once
+upon its historical verity and upon a natural interpretation of the
+supernatural--"a spontaneous illumination reflected from antiquity
+itself," which might result from primitive misunderstanding of natural
+phenomena, from the poetical embellishment of facts, or the symbolizing of
+an idea.
+
+Doctor Paulus, in his commentary on the Gospels (1800), carried the idea
+still farther, and the rationalistic school of Bible criticism became an
+assured fact, though Kant at this time developed an entirely different
+theory of Bible interpretation, which in a sense harked back to the older
+allegorical interpretation of the Bible.
+
+He did not trouble himself at all about the historical accuracy of the
+narratives. He was concerned only in discovering the idea underlying the
+stories, the moral gist of them in relation to human development. With the
+naturalists and the rationalists, he put aside any idea of Divine
+revelation. It was the moral aspiration of the authors, themselves, which
+threw a supernatural glamour over their accounts of old traditions and
+turned them into symbols of life instead of merely records of bona fide
+facts of history. The weakness of Kant's standpoint was later pointed out
+by Strauss, whose opinion is well summed up in the following paragraph.
+
+"Whilst Kant sought to educe moral thoughts from the biblical writings,
+even in their historical part, and was even inclined to consider these
+thoughts as the fundamental object of the history: on the other hand he
+derived these thoughts only from himself and the cultivation of his age,
+and therefore could seldom assume that they had actually been laid down by
+the authors of these writings; and on the other hand, and for the same
+reason, he omitted to show what was the relation between these thoughts
+and those symbolic representations, and how it happened that the one came
+to be expressed by the other."
+
+The next development of biblical criticism was the mythical mode of
+interpretation in which are prominent the names of Gabler, Schelling,
+Bauer, Vater, De Wette, and others. These critics among them set
+themselves the difficult task of classifying the Bible narratives under
+the heads of three kinds of myths: historical myths, philosophical myths,
+and poetical myths. The first were "narratives of real events colored by
+the light of antiquity, which confounded the divine and the human, the
+natural and the supernatural"; the second, "such as clothe in the garb of
+historical narrative a simple thought, a precept, or an idea of the time";
+the third, "historical and philosophical myths partly blended together and
+partly embellished by the creations of the imagination, in which the
+original fact or idea is almost obscured by the veil which the fancy of
+the poet has woven around it."
+
+This sort of interpretation, first applied to the Old Testament, was later
+used in sifting history from myth to the New Testament.
+
+It will be seen that it has something in common with both the previously
+opposed views. The mythical interpretation agrees with the old allegorical
+view in so far that they both relinquish historical reality in favor of
+some inherent truth or religious conception of which the historical
+semblance is merely the shell. On the other hand it agrees with the
+rationalistic view in the fact that it really gives a natural explanation
+of the process of the growth of myths and legends in human society.
+Immediate divine agency controls in the allegorical view, the spirit of
+individuals or of society controls in the mythical view.
+
+Neither the out-and-out rationalists nor the orthodox students of the
+Bible approved of this new mode of interpretation, which was more or less
+the outcome of the study of the sacred books of other religions. In 1835,
+however, appeared an epoch-making book which subjected the New Testament
+to the most elaborate criticism based upon mythical and legendary
+interpretation. This was the "Life of Jesus, Critically Examined," by Dr.
+David Friedrich Strauss. This book caused a great stir in the theological
+world of Germany. Strauss was dismissed from his professorship in the
+University of Tuebingen in consequence of it. Not only this, but in 1839,
+when he was appointed professor of Church History and Divinity at the
+University of Zurich, he was compelled at once to resign, and the
+administration which appointed him was overthrown. This veritable bomb
+thrown into the world of theology was translated by George Eliot, and
+published in England in 1846.
+
+Through this translation the most advanced German thought must have become
+familiar to many outside the pale of the professional scholar, and among
+them was, doubtless, the poet Browning, if indeed he had not already
+become familiar with it in the original. When the content and the thought
+of Browning's poems upon religious subjects are examined, it becomes
+certain that he was familiar with the whole trend of biblical criticism in
+the first half of the century and of its effect upon certain of the
+orthodox churchmen, and that with full consciousness he brought forward in
+his religious poems, not didactically, but often by the subtlest
+indirections, his own attitude toward the problems raised in this
+department of scientific historical inquiry.
+
+Some of the problems which occupied his attention, such as that in "The
+Death in the Desert," are directly traceable to the influence of Strauss's
+book. Whether he knew of Strauss's argument or not when he wrote "Saul,"
+his treatment of the story of David and Saul is not only entirely in
+sympathy with the creed of the German school of mythical interpreters, but
+the poet himself becomes one of the myth makers in the series of
+prophets--that is, he takes the idea, the Messianic idea, poetically
+embellishes an old tradition, making it glow with humanness, throws into
+that idea not only a content beyond that which David could have dreamed
+of, but suggests a purely psychical origin of the Messianic idea itself in
+keeping with his own thought on the subject.
+
+The history of the origin and growth of the Messianic ideal as traced by
+the most modern Jewish critics claims it to have been a slow evolution in
+the minds of the prophets. In Genesis it appears as the prophecy of a time
+to come of universal happiness promised to Abraham, through whose seed all
+the peoples of the earth shall be blessed, because they had hearkened unto
+the voice of God. From a family ideal in Abraham it passed on to being a
+tribal ideal with Jacob, and with the prophets it became a national ideal,
+an aspiration toward individual happiness and a noble national life. Not
+until the time of Isaiah is a special agent mentioned who is to be the
+instrument by means of which the blessing is to be fulfilled, and there we
+read this prophecy: "There shall sprout forth a shoot from the stem of
+Jesse, upon whom will rest the spirit of Yahveh, the spirit of wisdom
+and understanding, of counsel and strength, of the knowledge and fear of
+God. He will not judge according to appearance, nor will he according to
+hearsay. He will govern in righteousness the poor, and judge with equity
+the humble of the earth. He will smite the mighty with the rod of his
+mouth, and the wicked with the breath of his lips."
+
+The ideal expressed here of a great and wise national ruler who would
+bring about the realization of liberty, justice and peace to the Hebrew
+nation, and not only to them but to all mankind, becomes in the prophetic
+vision of Daniel a mystic being. "I saw in the visions of night, and
+behold, with the clouds of heaven came down as a likeness of the son of
+man. He stepped forward to the ancient of days. To him was given dominion,
+magnificence and rule. And all the peoples, nations and tongues did homage
+to him. His empire is an eternal empire and his realm shall never cease."
+
+In "Saul" Browning makes David the type of the prophetic faculty in its
+complete development. His vision is of an ideal which was not fully
+unfolded until the advent of Jesus himself--the ideal not merely of the
+mythical political liberator but of the spiritual saviour, who through
+infinite love would bring redemption and immortality to mankind. David
+in the poem essays to cheer Saul with the thought of the greatness that
+will live after him in the memory of others, but his own passionate desire
+to give something better than this to Saul awakens in him the assurance
+that God must be as full of love and compassion as he is. Thus Browning
+explains the sudden awakening of David, not as a divine revelation from
+without, but as a natural growth of the human spirit Godward. This new
+perception of values produces the ecstasy during which David sees his
+visions, the "witnesses, cohorts" about him, "angels, powers, the
+unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware."
+
+This whole conception was developed by Browning from the single phrase in
+I Samuel: "And David came to Saul, and stood before him: and he loved him
+greatly." In thus making David prophesy of an ideal which had not been
+evolved at his time, Browning indulges in what the biblical critic would
+call prophecy after the fact, and so throws himself in on the side of the
+mythical interpreters of the Bible.
+
+He has taken a historical narrative, embellished it poetically as in the
+imaginary accounts of the songs sung by David to Saul, and given it a
+philosophical content belonging on its objective side to the dawn of
+Christianity in the coming of Jesus himself and on its subjective side to
+his (the poet's) own time--that is, the idea of internal instead of
+external revelation--one of the ideas about which has been waged the
+so-called conflict of Science and Religion as it was understood by some of
+the most prominent thinkers of the latter half of the century. In this,
+again, it will be seen that Browning was in the van of the thought of the
+century, and still more was he in the van in the psychological tinge which
+he gives to David's experience. Professor William James himself could not
+better have portrayed a case of religious ecstasy growing out of genuine
+exaltation of thought than the poet has in David's experience.
+
+This poem undoubtedly sheds many rays of light upon the feelings, at the
+time, of its writer. While he was a profound believer in the spiritual
+nature and needs of man, he was evidently not opposed to the contemporary
+methods of biblical criticism as applied to the prophecies of the Old
+Testament, for has he not himself worked in accord with the light such
+criticism had thrown upon the origin of prophecy? Furthermore, the poem is
+not only an instance of his belief in the supremacy of the human spirit,
+but it distinctly repudiates the Comtian ideal of a religion of humanity,
+and of an immortality existing only in the memory of others. The Comte
+philosophy growing out of a material conception of the universe and a
+product of scientific thought has been one of the strong influences
+through the whole of the nineteenth century in sociology and religion.
+While it has worked much good in developing a deeper interest in the
+social life of man, it has proved altogether unsatisfactory and barren as
+a religious ideal, though there are minds which seem to derive some sort
+of forlorn comfort from this religion of positivism--from such hopes as
+may be inspired by the worship of Humanity "as a continuity and solidarity
+in time" without "any special existence, more largely composed of the dead
+than of the living," by the thought of an immortality in which we shall be
+reunited with the remembrance of our "grandsires" like Tyltyl and Mytyl in
+Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird."
+
+Here, as always, the poet throws in his weight on the side of the
+paramount worth of the individual, and of a conception of life which
+demands that the individual shall have a future world in which to overcome
+the flaws and imperfections incident to earthly life.
+
+Although, as I have tried to show, this poem undoubtedly bears witness to
+Browning's awareness to the thought currents of the day, it is couched in
+a form so dramatic, and in a language so poetic, that it seems like a
+spontaneous outburst of belief in which feeling alone had played a part.
+Certainly, whatever thoughts upon the subject may have been stowed away in
+the subconscious regions of the poet's mind, they well up here in a
+fountain of pure inspiration, carrying the thought forward on the wings of
+the poet's own spirit.
+
+Poems reflecting several phases of the turmoil of religious opinion rife
+in mid-century England are "Christmas Eve" and "Easter Day." Baffling they
+are, even misleading to any one who is desirous of finding out the exact
+attitude of the poet's mind, for example, upon the rival doctrines of a
+Methodist parson and a German biblical critic.
+
+The Methodist Chapel and the German University might be considered as
+representative of the extremes of thought in the more or less prescribed
+realm of theology, which largely through the influence of the filtering in
+of scientific and philosophic thought had divided itself into many sects.
+
+Within the Church of England itself there were high church and low
+church, broad church and Latitudinarian, into whose different shades of
+opinion it is not needful to enter here. Outside of the Established Church
+were the numerous dissenters, including Congregationalists, Baptists,
+Quakers, Methodists, Swedenborgians, Unitarians, and numerous others.
+
+There was one broad line of division between the Established Church and
+the dissenting bodies. In the first was inherent the ancient principle of
+authority, while the principle of self-government in matters of faith
+guided all the dissenters in their search for the light.
+
+It is not surprising that with so many differing shades of opinion within
+the bosom of the Anglican Church it should, in the earlier half of the
+century, have lost its grip upon not only the people at large, but upon
+many of its higher intellects. The principle of authority seemed to be
+tottering to its fall. In this crisis the Roman Catholic Church exercised
+a peculiar fascination upon men of intellectual endowment who, fearing the
+direction in which their intellect might lead them, turned to that church
+where the principle of authority kept itself firmly rooted by summarily
+dismissing any one who might question it. It is of interest to remember
+that at the date when this poem was written the Tractarian Movement, in
+which was conspicuous the Oxford group of men, had succeeded in carrying
+over four hundred clergymen and laity into the Catholic Church.
+
+Those who were unafraid followed the lead of German criticism and French
+materialism, but the large mass of common people found in Methodism the
+sort of religious guidance which it craved.
+
+To this sect has been attributed an unparalleled influence in the moral
+development of England. By rescuing multitudes from ignorance and from
+almost the degradation of beasts, and by fostering habits of industry and
+thrift, Methodism became a chief factor in building up a great,
+intelligent and industrious middle-class. Its influence has been felt even
+in the Established Church, and as its enthusiastic historians have pointed
+out, England might have suffered the political and religious convulsions
+inaugurated by the French Revolution if it had not been for the saving
+grace of Methodism.
+
+Appealing at first to the poor and lowly, suffering wrong and persecution
+with its founder, Wesley, it was so flexible in its constitution that
+after the death of Wesley it broadened out and differentiated in a way
+that made it adaptable to very varied human needs. In consequence of this
+it finally became a genuine power in the Church and State of Great
+Britain.
+
+The poem "Christmas Eve" becomes much more understandable when these facts
+about Methodism are borne in mind--facts which were evidently in the
+poet's mind, although the poem itself has the character of a symbolic
+rather than a personal utterance. The speaker might be regarded as a type
+of the religious conscience of England. In spite of whatever direct
+visions of the divine such a type of conscience may gain through the
+contemplation of nature and the revelations of the human heart, its
+relations to the past cause it to feel the need of some sectarian form of
+religion--a sort of inherited need to be orthodox in one form or another.
+This religious conscience has its artistic side; it can clothe its inborn
+religious instincts in exquisite imaginative vision. Also, it has its
+clear-sighted reasoning side. This is able unerringly to put its finger
+upon any flaw of doctrine or reasoning in the forms of religion it
+contemplates. Hence, Catholic doctrine, which was claiming the allegiance
+of those who were willing to put their troublesome intellects to sleep
+and accept authority where religion was concerned, does not satisfy this
+keen analyzer. Nor yet is it able to see any religious reality in such a
+myth of Christ rehabilitated as an ethical prophet as the Goettingen
+professor constructs in a manner so reminiscent of a passage in Strauss's
+"Life of Jesus," where he is describing the opinions of the rationalists'
+school of criticism, that a comparison with that passage is enlightening.
+
+Having swept away completely the supernatural basis of religion, the
+rationalist is able still to conceive of Jesus as a divine Messenger, a
+special favorite and charge of the Deity:
+
+    "He had implanted in him by God the natural conditions only of that
+    which he was ultimately to become, and his realization of this destiny
+    was the result of his own spontaneity. His admirable wisdom he
+    acquired by the judicious application of his intellectual powers and
+    the conscientious use of all the aids within his reach; his moral
+    greatness, by the zealous culture of his moral dispositions, the
+    restraint of his sensual inclinations and passions, and a scrupulous
+    obedience to the voice of his conscience; and on these alone rested
+    all that was exalted in his personality, all that was encouraging in
+    his example."
+
+The difficulty to this order of mind of the direct personal revelation
+lies in the fact that it is convincing only to those who experience it,
+having no basis in authority, and may even for them lose its force.
+
+What then is the conclusion forced upon this English religious conscience?
+Simply this: that, though failing both from the intellectual and the
+aesthetic standpoint, the dissenting view was the only religious view of
+the time possessing any genuine vitality. It represented the progressive,
+democratic religious force which was then in England bringing religion
+into the lives of the people with a positiveness long lost to the Anglican
+Church. The religious conscience of England was growing through this
+Methodist movement. This is why the speaker of the poem chooses at last
+that form of worship which he finds in the little chapel.
+
+While no one can doubt that the exalted mysticism based upon feeling, and
+the large tolerance of the poem, reflect most nearly the poet's personal
+attitude, on the other hand it is made clear that in his opinion the
+dissenting bodies possessed the forms of religious orthodoxy most potent
+at the time for good.
+
+In "Easter Day," the doubts and fears which have racked the hearts and
+minds of hundreds and thousands of individuals, as the result of the
+increase of scientific knowledge and biblical criticism are given more
+personal expression. The discussion turns principally upon the relation of
+the finite to the Infinite, a philosophical problem capable of much
+hair-splitting controversy, solved here in keeping with the prevailing
+thought of the century--namely, that the finite is relative and that this
+relativity is the proof of the Infinite.
+
+The boldness of this statement, one such as might be found in the pages of
+Spencer, is by Browning elaborated with pictorial and emotional power.
+Only by a marvelous vision is the truth brought home to the speaker that
+the beauties and joys of earth are not all-sufficient, but that they are
+in the poet's speech but partial beauty, though through this very
+limitation they become "a pledge of beauty in its plenitude," gleams
+"meant to sting with hunger for full light." It is not, however, until
+this see-er of visions perceives the highest gleam of earth that he is
+able to realize through the spiritual voice of his vision that the nature
+of the Infinite is in its essence Love, the supreme manifestation of which
+was symbolized in the death and resurrection of Christ.
+
+This revelation is nevertheless rendered null by the man's conviction that
+the vision was merely such "stuff as dreams are made on." At the end as
+at the beginning he finds it hard to be a Christian.
+
+His vision, which thus symbolizes his own course of emotionalized
+reasoning, brings hope but not conviction. Like the type in "Christmas
+Eve," conviction can come to him only through a belief in supernatural
+revelation. He is evidently a man of broad intellectual endowment, who
+cannot, as the Tractarians did, lay his mind asleep, and rest in the
+authority of a church, nor yet can he be satisfied with the unconscious
+anthropomorphism of the sectarian. He doubts his own reasoning attempts to
+formulate religious doctrines, he doubts even the revelations of his own
+mystic states of consciousness; hence there is nothing for him but to
+flounder on through life as best he can, hoping, fearing, doubting, as
+many a serious mind has done owing to the nineteenth-century reaction
+against the supernatural dogmas of Christianity. Like others of his ilk,
+he probably stayed in the Anglican Church and weakened it through his
+latitudinarianisms.
+
+A study in religious consciousness akin to this is that of Bishop
+Blougram. Here we have not a generalized type as in "Christmas Eve," nor
+an imaginary individual as in "Easter Day," but an actual study of a real
+man, it being no secret that Cardinal Wiseman was the inspiration for the
+poem.
+
+Wiseman's influence as a Catholic in the Tractarian movement was a
+powerful one, and in the poet's dissection of his psychology an attempt is
+made to present the reasoning by means of which he made his appeal to less
+independent thinkers. With faith as the basis of religion, doubt serves as
+a moral spur, since the will must exercise itself in keeping doubt
+underfoot. Browning, himself, might agree that aspiration toward faith was
+one of the tests of its truth, he might also consider doubt as a spur to
+greater aspiration, but these ideals would connote something different to
+him from what he makes them mean to Blougram. The poet's aspiration would
+be toward a belief in Omniscient Love and Power, his doubts would grow out
+of his inability to make this ideal tally with the sin and evil he beholds
+in life. Blougram's consciousness is on a lower plane. His aspiration is
+to believe in the dogmas of the Church, his doubts arise from an
+intellectual fear that the dogmas may not be true. Where Browning seems to
+miss comprehension of such a nature as Blougram's is in failing to
+recognize that on his own plane of consciousness genuine feeling and the
+perception of beauty play at least as large a part in the basis of his
+faith as utilitarian and instinctive reasoning do. While this poem shows
+in its references to the scientific theories of the origin of morals and
+its allusions to Strauss, as well as in the indirect portrayal of
+Gigadibs, the man emancipated from the Church, how entirely familiar the
+poet was with the currents of religious and scientific thought, it falls
+short as a fair analysis of a man who is acknowledged to have wielded a
+tremendous religious influence upon Englishmen of the caliber of Cardinal
+Newman, Kingsley, Arnold, and others.
+
+If we leave out of account its connection with a special individual, the
+poem stands, however, as a delightful study of a type in which is depicted
+in passingly clever fashion methods of reasoning compounded of tantalizing
+gleams of truth and darkening sophistication.
+
+The poem which shows most completely the effect of contemporary biblical
+criticism on the poet is "A Death in the Desert." It has been said to be
+an attempt to meet the destructive criticism of Strauss. The setting of
+the poem is wonderfully beautiful, while the portrayal of the mystical
+quality of John's reasoning is so instinct with religious feeling that it
+must be a wary reader indeed who does not come from the reading of this
+poem with the conviction that here, at least, Browning has declared
+himself unflinchingly on the side of supernatural Christianity in the face
+of the battering rams of criticism and the projectiles of science.
+
+But if he be a wary reader, he will discover that the argument for
+supernaturalism only amounts to this--and it is put in the mouth of John,
+who had in his youth been contemporary with Christ--namely, that miracles
+had been performed when only by means of them faith was possible, though
+miracles were probably not what those who believed in them thought they
+were. Here is the gist of his defence of the supernatural:
+
+    "I say, that as a babe, you feed awhile,
+  Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself,
+  So, minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth:
+  When they can eat, babes'-nurture is withdrawn.
+  I fed the babe whether it would or no:
+  I bid the boy or feed himself or starve.
+  I cried once, 'That ye may believe in Christ,
+  Behold this blind man shall receive his sight!'
+  I cry now, 'Urgest thou, _for I am shrewd
+  And smile at stories how John's word could cure--
+  Repeat that miracle and take my faith_?'
+  I say, that miracle was duly wrought
+  When save for it no faith was possible.
+  Whether a change were wrought in the shows o' the world,
+  Whether the change came from our minds which see
+  Of shows o' the world so much as and no more
+  Than God wills for his purpose,--(what do I
+  See now, suppose you, there where you see rock
+  Round us?)--I know not; such was the effect,
+  So faith grew, making void more miracles,
+  Because too much they would compel, not help.
+  I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ
+  Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
+  All questions in the earth and out of it,
+  And has so far advanced thee to be wise.
+  Wouldst thou improve this to re-prove the proved?
+  In life's mere minute, with power to use the proof,
+  Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung?
+  Thou hast it; use it and forthwith, or die!"
+
+The important truth as seen by John's dying eyes is that faith in a
+beautiful ideal has been born in the human soul. Whether the accounts of
+the exact means by which this faith arose were literally true is of little
+importance, the faith itself is no less God-given, as another passage will
+make clear:
+
+  "Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect
+  He could not, what he knows now, know at first;
+  What he considers that he knows to-day,
+  Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown;
+  Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns
+  Because he lives, which is to be a man,
+  Set to instruct himself by his past self;
+  First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn,
+  Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind,
+  Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.
+  God's gift was that man should conceive of truth
+  And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake
+  As midway help till he reach fact indeed."
+
+The defence of Christianity in this poem reminds one very strongly of the
+theology of Schleiermacher, a resume of which the poet might have found in
+Strauss's "Life of Jesus." Although Schleiermacher accepted and even went
+beyond the negative criticism of the rationalists against the doctrines of
+the Church, he sought to retain the essential aspects of positive
+Christianity. He starts out from the consciousness of the Christian, "from
+that internal experience resulting to the individual from his connection
+with the Christian community, and he thus obtains a material which, as its
+basis of feeling, is more flexible and to which it is easier to give
+dialectically a form that satisfies science."
+
+Again, "If we owe to him [Jesus] the continual strengthening of the
+consciousness of God within us, this consciousness must have existed in
+him in absolute strength, so that it or God in the form of the
+consciousness was the only operative force within him." In other words, in
+Jesus was the supreme manifestation of God in human consciousness. This
+truth, first grasped by means which seemed miraculous, is finally
+recognized in man's developing consciousness as a consummation brought
+about by natural means. John's reasoning in the poem can lead to no other
+conclusion than this.
+
+Schleiermacher's theology has, of course, been objected to on the ground
+that if this incarnation of God was possible in one man, there is no
+reason why it should not frequently be possible. This is the orthodox
+objection, and it is voiced in the comment added by "One" at the end of
+the poem showing the weakness of John's argument from the strictly
+orthodox point of view.
+
+With regard to the miracles being natural events supernaturally
+interpreted--that is an explanation familiar to the biblical critic, and
+one which the psychologist of to-day is ready to support with numberless
+proofs and analyses. How much this poem owes to hints derived from
+Strauss's book is further illustrated by the "Glossa of Theotypas," which
+is borrowed from Origen, whose theory is referred to by Strauss in his
+Introduction as follows: "Origen attributes a threefold meaning to the
+Scriptures, corresponding with his distribution of the human being into
+three parts, the liberal sense answering to the body, the moral to the
+soul, and the mystical to the spirit."
+
+On the whole, the poem appears to be influenced more by the actual
+contents of Strauss's book than to be deliberately directed against his
+thought, for John's own reasoning when his feelings are in abeyance might
+be deduced from more than one passage in this work wherein are passed in
+review the conclusions of divers critics of the naturalist and rationalist
+schools of thought.
+
+The poem "An Epistle" purports to give a nearly contemporary opinion by an
+Arab physician upon the miracle of the raising of Lazarus. We have here,
+on the one hand, the Arab's natural explanation of the miracle as an
+epileptic trance prolonged some three days, and Lazarus's interpretation
+of his cure as a supernatural event. Though absolutely skeptical, the Arab
+cannot but be impressed with the beliefs of Lazarus, because of their
+revelation of God as a God of Love. Thus Browning brings out the power of
+the truth in the underlying ideas of Christianity, whatever skepticism may
+be felt as to the letter of it.
+
+The effect of the trance upon the nature of Lazarus is paralleled to-day
+by accounts, given by various persons, of their sensations when they
+have sunk into unconsciousness nigh unto death. I remember reading of a
+case in which a man described his feeling of entire indifference as to the
+relations of life, his joy in a sense of freedom and ineffable beauty
+toward which he seemed to be flying through space, and his disinclination
+to be resuscitated, a process which his spirit was watching from its
+heights with fear lest his friends should bring him back to earth. This
+higher sort of consciousness seems to have evolved in some people to-day
+without the intervention of such an experience as that of Lazarus or one
+such as that of the above subject of the Society for Psychical Research.
+
+In describing Lazarus to have reached such an outlook upon life, Browning
+again ranges himself with the most advanced psychological thought of the
+century. Hear William James: "The existence of mystical states absolutely
+overthrows the pretension of non-mystical states to be the sole and
+ultimate dictators of what we may believe. As a rule, mystical states
+merely add a supersensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data of
+consciousness. They are excitements like the emotions of love or ambition,
+gifts to our spirit by means of which facts already objectively before
+us fall into a new expressiveness and make a new connection with our
+active life. They do not contradict these facts as such, or deny anything
+that our senses have immediately seized. It is the rationalistic critic
+rather who plays the part of denier in the controversy, and his denials
+have no strength, for there never can be a state of facts to which new
+meaning may not truthfully be added, provided the mind ascend to a more
+enveloping point of view. It must always remain an open question whether
+mystical states may not possibly be such superior points of view, windows
+through which the mind looks out upon a more extensive and inclusive
+world. The difference of the views seen from the different mystical
+windows need not prevent us from entertaining this supposition. The wider
+world would in that case prove to have a mixed constitution like that of
+this world, that is all. It would have its celestial and its infernal
+regions, its tempting and its saving moments, its valid experiences and
+its counterfeit ones, just as our world has them; but it would be a wider
+world all the same. We should have to use its experiences by selecting and
+subordinating and substituting just as is our custom in this ordinary
+naturalistic world; we should be liable to error just as we are now; yet
+the counting in of that wider world of meanings, and the serious dealing
+with it, might, in spite of all the perplexity, be indispensable stages in
+our approach to the final fulness of the truth."
+
+The vision of Lazarus belongs to the beatific realm, and the naturalistic
+Arab has a longing for similar strange vision, though he calls it a
+madman's, for--
+
+  "So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too--
+  So, through the thunder comes a human voice
+  Saying, 'O heart I made, a heart beats here!
+  Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
+  Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,
+  But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
+  And thou must love me who have died for thee.'"
+
+A survey of Browning's contributions to the theological differences of the
+mid-century would not be complete without some reference to "Caliban" and
+"Childe Roland." In the former, the absurdities of anthropomorphism, of
+the God conceived in the likeness of man, are presented with dramatic and
+ironical force, but, at the same time, is shown the aspiration to
+something beyond, which has carried dogma through all the centuries,
+forward to ever purer and more spiritual conceptions of the absolute. In
+the second, though it be a purely romantic ballad, there seems to be
+symbolized the scientific knight-errant of the century, who, with belief
+and faith completely annihilated by the science which allows for no realm
+of knowledge beyond its own experimental reach, yet considers life worth
+living. Despite the complex interpretations which have issued from the
+oracular tripods of Browning Societies, one cannot read the last lines of
+this poem--
+
+  "Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
+  And blew, '_Childe Roland to the dark Tower came_'"--
+
+without thinking of the splendid courage in the face of disillusionment of
+such men of the century as Huxley, Tyndall or Clifford.
+
+When we ask, where is Browning in all this diversity of theological
+opinion? we can only answer that beyond an ever-present undercurrent of
+religious aspiration there is no possibility of pinning the poet to any
+given dogmas. Everywhere we feel the dramatic artist. In "Paracelsus" the
+philosophy of life was that of the artist whose adoration finds its
+completion in beauty and joy; now the poet himself is the artist
+experiencing as Aprile did, this beauty and joy in a boundless sympathy
+with many forms of mystical religious ecstasy. Every one of these poems
+presents a conflict between the doubts born of some phase of theological
+controversy and the exaltation of moments or periods of ecstatic vision,
+and though nowhere is dogmatic truth asserted with positiveness,
+everywhere we feel a mystic sympathy with the moving power of religious
+aspiration, a sympathy which belongs to a form of consciousness perhaps
+more inclusive than the religious--namely, a poetic consciousness, able at
+once to sympathize with the content and to present the forms of mystic
+vision belonging to various phases of human consciousness.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE CENTURY'S END: PROMISE OF PEACE
+
+
+Passing onward from this mid-century phase of Browning's interest in what
+I have called the battle of the mind and the spirit, we find him in his
+later poems taking up the subject in its broader aspects, more as he
+treated it in "Paracelsus," yet with a marked difference in temper. God is
+no longer conceived of merely as a divine creator, joying in the wonder
+and beauty of his creations. The ideal of the artist has been modified by
+the observation of the thinker and the feeling induced by human rather
+than by artistic emotion. Life's experiences have shown to the more
+humanly conscious Browning that the problem of evil is not one to be so
+easily dismissed. The scientist may point out that evil is but lack of
+development, and the lover and artist may exult when he sees the wonderful
+processes of nature and mind carrying forward development until he can
+picture a time when the evil shall become null and void, but the human,
+feeling being sees the misery and the unloveliness of evil. It does not
+satisfy him to know that it is lack of development or the outcome of lack
+of development, nor yet that it will grow less as time goes on he ponders
+the problem, "why is evil permitted, how is it to be harmonized with the
+existence of a universe planned upon a scheme which he believes to be the
+outcome of a source all-powerful and all-loving!"
+
+About this problem and its corollary, the conception of the infinite,
+Browning's latter-day thought revolves as it did in his middle years about
+the basis of religious belief.
+
+It is one of the strange freaks of criticism that many admirers of
+Browning's earlier work have failed to see the importance of his later
+poems, especially "Ferishtah's Fancies," and "The Parleyings," not only as
+expressions of the poet's own spiritual growth, but as showing his mental
+grasp of the problems which the advance of nineteenth-century scientific
+thought brought to the fore in the last days of the century.
+
+The date at which various critics have declared that Browning ceased to
+write poetry might be considered an index of the time when that critic's
+powers became atrophied. No less a person than Edmund Gosse is of the
+opinion that since 1868 the poet's books were chiefly valuable as keeping
+alive popular interest in him, and as leading fresh generations of readers
+to what he had already published. Fortunately it has long been admitted
+that Homer sometimes nods, though not with such awful effect as was said
+to attend the nods of Jove. Hence, in spite of Mr. Gosse's undoubted
+eminence as a critic, we may dare to assume that in this particular
+instance he fell into the ancient and distinguished trick of nodding.
+
+If Mr. Gosse were right, it would practically put on a par with a mere
+advertising scheme many poems which have now become household favorites.
+Take, for example, "Herve Riel." Think of the blue-eyed Breton hero whom
+all the world has learned to love through Browning, tolerated simply as an
+index finger to "The Pied Piper of Hamelin." Take, too, such poems, as
+"Donald." This man's dastardly sportsmanship is so vividly portrayed that
+it has the power to arouse strong emotion in strong men, who have been
+known literally to break down in the middle of it through excess of
+feeling; "Ivan Ivanovitch," in which is embodied such fear and horror that
+weak hearts cannot stand the strain of hearing it read; the story of the
+dog Tray, who rescued a drowning doll with the same promptitude as he
+did a drowning child--at the relation of whose noble deeds the eyes of
+little children grow eager with excitement and sympathy. And where is
+there in any poet's work a more vivid bit of tragedy than "A Forgiveness?"
+
+And would not an unfillable gap be left in the ranks of our friends of the
+imaginative world if Balaustion were blotted out?--the exquisite lyric
+girl, brave, tender and with a mind in which wisdom and wit are fair play
+fellows.
+
+As Carlyle might say, "Verily, verily, Mr. Gosse, thou hast out-Homered
+Homer, and thy nod hath taken upon itself very much the semblance of a
+snore."
+
+These and many others which might be mentioned since the date when Mr.
+Gosse autocratically put up the bars to the poet's genius are now
+universally accepted. There are others, however, such as "The Red Cotton
+Night-cap Country," "The Inn Album," "Aristophanes' Apology," "Fifine at
+the Fair," which are liable at any time to attacks from atrophied critics,
+and among these are the groups of poems which are to form the center of
+our present discussion.
+
+Without particularizing either critics or criticism it may be said that
+criticism of these poems divides itself into the usual three
+branches--one which objects to their philosophy, one which objects to
+their art, one which finds them difficult of comprehension at all. This
+last criticism may easily be disposed of by admitting it is in part true.
+The mind whose highest reaches of poetic inspiration are ministered unto
+by such simple and easily understandable lyrics as "Twinkle, twinkle,
+little star," might not at once grasp the significance of the Parleying
+with George Bubb Dodington. Indeed, it may be surmised that some minds
+might sing upon the starry heights with Hegel and fathom the equivalence
+of being and non-being, and yet be led into a slough of despond by this
+same cantankerous George.
+
+But a poetical slough of despond may be transfigured in the twinkling of
+an eye--after a proper amount of study and hard thinking--into an elevated
+plateau with prospects upon every side, grand or terrible or smiling.
+
+Are we never to feel spurred to any poetical pleasure more vigorous than
+dilly-dallying with Keats while we feast our eyes upon the wideness of the
+seas? or lazily floating in a lotus land with Tennyson, perhaps, among the
+meadows of the Musketaquid, in canoes with silken cushions? Beauty and
+peace are the reward of such poetical pleasures. They fall upon the spirit
+like the "sweet sound that breathes upon a bank of violets, stealing and
+giving odor," but shall we never return from the land where it is always
+afternoon? Is it only in such a land as this that we realize the true
+power of emotion? Rather does it conduce to the slumber of emotion, for
+progress is the law of feeling as it is the law of life, and many times we
+feel--yes, feel--with tremendous rushes of enthusiasm like climbing
+Matterhorns with great iron nails in our shoes, with historical and
+archaeological and philosophical Alpen-stocks in our hands, and when we
+reach the summit what unsuspected beauties become ours!
+
+Then let us hear no more of the critic who wishes Browning had ceased to
+write in 1868 or at any other date. It may be said of him, not as of
+Whitman, "he who reads my book touches a man," but "he who reads my poems
+from start to finish grasps the life and thought of a century."
+
+There will be no exaggeration in claiming that these two series of poems
+form the keystone to Browning's whole work. They are like a final
+synthesis of the problems of existence which he has previously portrayed
+and analyzed from myriad points of view in his dramatic presentation of
+character and his dramatic interpretations of spiritual moods.
+
+In "Pauline," before the poet's personality became more or less merged in
+that of his characters, we obtain a direct glimpse of the poet's own
+artistic temperament, and may literally acquaint ourselves with those
+qualities which were to be a large influence in moulding his work.
+
+As described by himself, the poet of "Pauline" was
+
+  "Made up of an intensest life,
+  Of a most clear idea of consciousness
+  Of self, distinct from all its qualities,
+  From all affections, passions, feelings, powers;
+  And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all:
+  But linked in me to self-supremacy,
+  Existing as a center to all things,
+  Most potent to create and rule and call
+  Upon all things to minister to it."
+
+This sense of an over-consciousness is the mark of an objective poet--one
+who sympathizes with all the emotions and aspirations of
+humanity--interprets their actions through the light of this sympathy, and
+at the same time keeps his own individuality distinct.
+
+The poet of this poem discovers that he can no longer lose himself with
+enthusiasm in any phase of life; but what does that mean to a soul
+constituted as his? It means that the way has been cleared for the birth
+of that greater, broader love of the fully developed artist soul which,
+while entering into sympathy with all phases of life, finds its true
+complement only in an ideal of absolute Love.
+
+This picture of the artist aspiring toward the absolute by means of his
+large human sympathy may be supplemented by the theory of man's relation
+to the universe involved in "Paracelsus" as we have seen.
+
+From this point in his work, Browning, like the Hindu Brahma, becomes
+manifest not as himself, but in his creations. The poet whose portrait is
+painted for us in "Pauline" is the same poet who sympathetically presents
+a whole world of human experiences to us, and the philosopher whose
+portrait is drawn in "Paracelsus" is the same who interprets these human
+experiences in the light of the great life theories therein presented.
+
+But as the creations of Brahma return into himself, so the human
+experiences Browning has entered into artistic sympathy with return to
+enrich his completed view of the problems of life, when, like his own
+Rabbi Ben Ezra, he reaches the last of life for which the first was
+planned in these "Fancies" and "Parleyings."
+
+Though these two groups of poems undoubtedly express the poet's own mature
+conclusions, they yet preserve the dramatic form. Several things are
+gained in this way: First, the poems are saved from didacticism, for the
+poet expresses his opinions as an individual, and not in his own person as
+a seer, trying to implant his theories in the minds of disciples. Second,
+variety is given and the mind stimulated by having opposite points of view
+presented, while the thought is infused with a certain amount of emotional
+force through the heat of argument.
+
+It has frequently been objected, not only of these poems, but upon general
+grounds, that philosophical and ethical problems are not fit subjects for
+treatment in poetry. There is one point which the critic of aesthetics
+seems in danger of never realizing--namely, that the law of evolution is
+differentiation, in art as well as in cosmic, organic, and social life. It
+is just as prejudiced and unforeseeing in these days to limit poetry to
+this or that kind of a subject, or to say that nothing is dramatic which
+does not deal with immediate action, as it would have been for Homer to
+declare that no poem would ever be worthy the name that did not contain
+a catalogue of ships.
+
+These facts exist! We have dramas dealing merely with action, dramas in
+which character development is of prime importance; dramas wherein action
+and character are entirely synchronous; and those in which the action
+means more than appears upon the surface, like Hauptmann's "Sunken Bell,"
+or Ibsen's "Master Builder"; then why not dramas of thought and dramas of
+mood when the brain and heart become the stage of action instead of an
+actual stage.
+
+Surely such an extension of the possibilities of dramatic art is a
+development quite natural to the intellectual ferment of the nineteenth
+century. As the man in "Half Rome" says, "Facts are facts and lie not, and
+the question, 'How came that purse the poke o' you?' admits of no reply."
+
+By using the dramatic form, the poet has furthermore been enabled to give
+one a deep sense of the characteristics peculiar to the century. The
+latter half of Victorian England in its thought phases lives just as
+surely in these poems as Renaissance Italy in its art phases in "Fra Lippo
+Lippi," "Andrea del Sarto," and the rest; and this is true though the
+first series is cast in the form of Persian fables and the second in the
+form of "Parleyings" with worthies of past centuries.
+
+It may be worth while for the benefit of the reader not thoroughly
+familiar with these later poems to pass quickly in review the problems in
+them upon which Browning bends his poet's insight.
+
+Nothing bears upon the grounds of moral action more disastrously than
+blind fatalism, and while there have been many evil forms of this doctrine
+in the past there has probably been none worse than the modern form,
+because it seems to have sanction in the scientific doctrines of the
+conservation of energy, the persistence of heredity, and the survival of
+the fittest. Even the wise and the thoughtful with wills atrophied by
+scientific phases of fatalism allow themselves to drift upon what they
+call the laws of development, possessing evidently no realizing sense that
+the will of man, whether it be in the last analysis absolutely free or
+not, is a prime factor in the working of these laws. Such people will
+hesitate, therefore, to throw in their voices upon either side in the
+solution of great national problems, because, things being bound to follow
+the laws of development, what matters a single voice! Such arguments were
+frequently heard among the wise in our own country during the Cuban and
+Philippine campaigns. Upon this attitude of mind the poet gives his
+opinion in the first of "Ferishtah's Fancies," "The Eagle." It is a strong
+plea for the exercise of those human impulses that lead to action. The
+will to serve the world is the true force from God. Every man, though he
+be the last link in a chain of causes over which he had no control, can,
+at least, have a determining influence upon the direction in which the
+next link shall be forged. Ferishtah appears upon the scene, himself, a
+fatalist, leaving himself wholly in God's hands, until he is taught by the
+dream God sent him that man's part is to act as he saw the eagle act,
+succoring the helpless, not to play the part of the helpless birdlings.
+
+Another phase of the same thought is brought out in "A Camel Driver,"
+where the discussion turns upon punishment. The point is, if, as Ferishtah
+declares, the sinner is not to be punished eternally, then why should man
+trouble himself to punish him? Universalist doctrines are here put into
+the mouth of Ferishtah, and not a few modern philanthropists would agree
+with Ferishtah's questioners that punishment for sins (the manifestations
+of inherited tendencies for which the sinners are not responsible) is no
+longer admissible. Ferishtah's answer amounts to this. That no matter what
+causes for beneficent ends may be visible to the Divine mind in the
+allowance of the existence of sin, nor yet the fact that Divine love
+demands that punishment shall not be eternal; man must regard sin simply
+from the human point of view as absolute evil, and must will to work for
+its annihilation. It follows then that the punishing of a sinner is the
+means by which he may be taught to overcome the sin. There is the added
+thought, also, that the suffering of the conscience over the subtler sins
+which go unpunished is all the hell one needs.
+
+Another doctrine upon which the nineteenth-century belief in progress as
+the law of life has set its seal is that of the pursuit of happiness, or
+the striving for the greatest good of the whole number in which oneself is
+not to be excluded. With this doctrine Browning shows himself in full
+sympathy in "Two Camels," wherein Ferishtah contends that only through the
+development of individual happiness and the experiencing of many forms of
+joyousness can one help others to happiness and joyousness, while in "Plot
+Culture" the enjoyment of human emotion as a means of developing the soul
+is emphasized.
+
+The relation of good and evil in their broader aspects occupy the poet's
+attention in others of this group. Nineteenth-century thought brought
+about a readjustment of these relations. Good and evil as absolutely
+definable entities gave place to the doctrine that good and evil are
+relative terms, a phrase which we sometimes forget must be understood in
+two ways: first, that good and evil are relative to the state of society
+in which they exist. What may be good according to the ethics of a Fejee
+Islander would not hold in the civilized society of to-day. This is the
+evil of lack of development which in the long run becomes less. On the
+other hand, there is the evil of suffering and pain which it is more
+difficult to reconcile with the idea of omnipotent power. In "Mihrab
+Shah," Browning gives a solution of this problem in consonance with the
+idea that were it not for evil we should not have learned how to
+appreciate the good, to work for it, and, in doing so, bring about
+progress.
+
+To his pupil, worried over this problem, Ferishtah points out that evil in
+the form of bodily suffering has given rise to the beautiful sentiments of
+pity and sympathy. Having proved in this way that good really grows out of
+evil, there is still the query, shall evil be encouraged in order that
+good may be evolved? "No!" Ferishtah declares, man bound by man's
+conditions is obliged to estimate as "fair or foul right, wrong, good,
+evil, what man's faculty adjudges as such," therefore the man will do all
+he can to relieve the suffering or poor Mihrab Shah with a fig plaster.
+
+The final answers, then, which Browning gives to the ethical problems
+which grew out of the acceptance of modern scientific doctrines are, in
+brief, that man shall use that will-power of which he feels himself
+possessed--the power really distinguishing him from the brute creation--in
+working against whatever appears to him to be evil; while that good for
+which he shall work is the greatest happiness of all.
+
+In the remaining poems of the group we have the poet's mature word upon
+the philosophical doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, a doctrine
+which received the most elaborate demonstration from Herbert Spencer in
+many directions. It is insisted upon in "Cherries," "The Sun," in "A Bean
+Stripe also Apple Eating," and especially in that remarkable poem, "A
+Pillar at Sebzevar." That knowledge fails is the burden of these poems.
+Knowledge the golden is but lacquered ignorance, as gain to be
+mistrusted. Curiously enough, this contention of Browning's has been the
+cause of most of the criticisms against him as a thinker, yet the deepest
+thinkers of to-day as well as many in the past have held the opinion in
+some form or another that the intellect was unable to solve the mysterious
+problems of the universe. Even the metaphysicians who build their unstable
+air castles on _a priori_ ideas declare these ideas cannot be matters of
+mere intellectual perception, but must be intuitions of the higher reason.
+Browning, however, does not rest in the mere assertion that the intellect
+fails. From this truth, so disconcerting to many, he draws immense
+comfort. Though intellectual knowledge be mistrusted as gain, it is not to
+be mistrusted as means to gain, for through its very failure it becomes a
+promise of greater things.
+
+"Friend," quoth Ferishtah in "A Pillar of Sebzevar,"
+
+  "As gain--mistrust it! Nor as means to gain:
+  Lacquer we learn by: cast in firing-pot,
+  We learn--when what seemed ore assayed proves dross
+  Surelier true gold's worth, guess how purity
+  I' the lode were precious could one light on ore
+  Clarified up to test of crucible.
+  The prize is in the process: knowledge means
+  Ever-renewed assurance by defeat
+  That victory is somehow still to reach."
+
+For men with minds of the type of Spencer's this negative assurance of the
+Infinite is sufficient, but human beings as a rule will not rest satisfied
+with such cold abstractions. Though Job said thousands of years ago, "Who
+by searching can find out God," mankind still continues to search. They
+long to know something of the nature of the divine as well as to be
+assured of its existence. In this very act of searching Browning declares
+the divine becomes most directly manifest.
+
+From the earliest times of which we have any record man has been aspiring
+toward God. Many times has he thought he had found him, but with enlarged
+perceptions he discovered later that what he had found was only God's
+image built up out of his own human experiences.
+
+This search of man for the divine is described with great power and
+originality in the Fancy called "The Sun," under the symbol of the man who
+seeks the prime Giver that he may give thanks where it is due for a
+palatable fig. This search for God, Browning calls love, meaning by that
+the moving, aspiring force of the whole universe in its multifarious
+manifestations, from the love that goes forth in thanks for benefits
+received, through the aspiration of the artist toward beauty, of the
+lover toward human sympathy, even of the scientist toward knowledge, to
+the lover of humanity like Ferishtah, who declares, "I know nothing save
+that love I can, boundlessly, endlessly."
+
+The poet argues from this that if mankind has with ever-increasing fervor
+aspired toward a God of Love, and has ever developed toward broader
+conceptions of human love, it is only reasonable to infer that in his
+nature God has some attribute which corresponds to human love, though it
+transcend our most exalted imagining of it.
+
+At the end of the century a book was written in America in which an
+argument similar to this was used to prove the existence of God. This book
+was "Through Nature to God," by John Fiske, whose earlier work, "Cosmic
+Philosophy," did much to familiarize the American reading public with the
+evolutionary philosophy of Spencer.
+
+Fiske claimed that his theory was entirely original, yet no one familiar
+with the thought of Browning could fail to see the similarity of their
+points of view. Fiske based his proof upon analogies drawn from the
+evolution of organic life in following out the law of the adjustment of
+inner to outer relations. For example, since the eye has through aeons
+of time gradually adjusted itself into harmony with light, why should not
+man's search for God be the gradual adjustment of the soul into harmony
+with the infinite spirit? This adjustment, as Browning expresses it, is
+that of human love to divine love.
+
+[Illustration: HERBERT SPENCER]
+
+Other modern thinkers, notably Schleiermacher in Germany and Shaftsbury in
+England, have placed the basis of religious truth in feeling. The idea is
+thus not a new one. Yet in Browning's treatment of it the conception has
+taken on new life, partly because of the intensity of conviction with
+which it is expounded in these later poems, and partly because of its
+having been so closely knit into the scientific thought of the century.
+
+Optimistically the thought is finally rounded out in "A Bean Stripe also
+Apple Eating," in which Ferishtah argues that life in spite of the evil in
+it seems to him on the whole good. He cannot believe that evil is not
+meant to serve a good purpose since he is so sure that God is infinite in
+love.
+
+From all this it will be seen that Browning accepts with Spencerians the
+negative proof of God growing out of the failure of intellect to grasp the
+realities underlying all phenomena, but adds to it the positive proof
+based upon emotion. The true basis of belief is the intuition of God
+that comes from the direct revelation of feeling in the human heart, which
+has been at once the motive force of the search for God and the basis of a
+conception of the nature of God.
+
+It was a stroke of genius on the part of the poet to present such problems
+in Persian guise, for Persia stands in Zoroastrianism for the dualism
+which Ferishtah with his progressive spirit decries in his recognition of
+the part evil plays in the development of good, and through Mahometanism
+for the Fatalism Ferishtah learned to cast from him. The Persian
+atmosphere is preserved throughout not only by the introduction constantly
+of Persian allusions traceable to the great Persian epic, "The Shah
+Nameh," but by the telling of fables in the Persian manner to point the
+morals intended.
+
+With the exception of the first Fancy, derived from a fable of Bidpai's,
+we have the poet's own word that all the others are inventions of his own.
+These clever stories make the poems lively reading in spite of their
+ethical content. Ferishtah is drawn with strong strokes. Wise and clever
+he stands before us, reminding us at times of Socrates--never at a loss
+for an answer no matter what bothersome questions his pupils may
+propound.
+
+If we see the thoughtful and brilliant Browning in the "Fancies" proper,
+we perhaps see even more clearly the emotional and passionate Browning in
+the lyrics which add variety and an unwonted charm to the whole. This
+feature is also borrowed from Persian form, an interesting example of
+which has been given to English readers in Edwin Arnold's "Gulistan" or
+"Rose Garden" of the poet Sa'di. Indeed Browning evidently derived the
+hint for his humorous prologue in which he likens the poems to follow to
+an Italian dish made of ortolans on toast with a bitter sage leaf,
+symbolizing sense, sight, and song from Sa'di's preface to the "Rose
+Garden," wherein he says, "Yet will men of light and learning, from whom
+the true countenance of a discourse is not concealed, be well aware that
+herein the pearls of good counsel which heal are threaded on strings of
+right sense; that the bitter physic of admonition is constantly mingled
+with the honey of good humor, so that the spirits of listeners grow not
+sad, and that they remain not exempt from blessings of acceptance."
+
+A further interest attaches to these lyrics because they form a series of
+emotional phases in the soul-life of two lovers whom we are probably
+justified in regarding as Mr. and Mrs. Browning. One naturally thinks of
+them as companion pictures to Mrs. Browning's "Sonnets from the
+Portuguese." In these the sunrise of a great love is portrayed with
+intense and exalted passion, while the lyrics in "Ferishtah's Fancies"
+reflect the subsequent development of such a love, through the awakening
+of whole new realms of feeling, wherein love for humanity is enlarged
+criticism from the one beloved welcome; all the little trials of life
+dissolved in the new light; and divine love realized with a force never
+before possible.
+
+Do we not see a living portrait of the two poets in the lyric "So the head
+aches and the limbs are faint?" Many a hint may be found in the Browning
+letters to prove that Mrs. Browning with just such a frail body possessed
+a fire of spirit that carried her constantly toward attainment, while he,
+with all the vigor of splendid health, could with truth have frequently
+said, "In the soul of me sits sluggishness." These exquisite lyrics,
+which, whether they conform to Elizabethan models or not, are as fine as
+anything ever done in this form, are crowned by the epilogue in which we
+hear the stricken husband crying out to her whom twenty years earlier he
+had called his "lyric love," in a voice doubting, yet triumphing in the
+thought that his lifelong optimism is the light radiating from the halo
+which her human love had irised round his head.
+
+No more emphatic way than the interspersion of these emotional lyrics
+could have been chosen to bring home the poet's conviction of the value of
+emotion in finding a positive basis for religious belief.
+
+In the "Parleyings" the discussions turn principally upon artistic
+problems and their relation to modern thought. Four out of the seven were
+inspired by artist, poet or musician. The forgotten worthies whom Browning
+rescued from oblivion make their appeal to him upon various grounds that
+connect them with the present.
+
+Bernard de Mandeville evidently caught Browning's fancy, because in his
+satirical poem, "The Grumbling Hive," he forestalled, by a defence of the
+Duke of Marlborough's war policy, the doctrine of the relativity of good
+and evil. This subject, though so fully treated in the "Fancies," still
+continued to fascinate Browning, who seemed to feel the need of thinking
+his way through all its implications. Fresh interest is added in this
+case because the objector in the argument was the poet's contemporary
+Carlyle, whose well-known pessimism in regard to the existence of evil is
+graphically presented.
+
+Browning clenches his side of the argument with an original and daring
+variation upon the Prometheus myth led up to by one of the most
+magnificent passages in the whole range of his poetry, and probably the
+finest example anywhere in literature of a description of nature as
+interpreted by the laws of cosmic evolution. A comparison of this passage
+with the one in "Paracelsus" brings out very clearly the exact measure of
+the advance in the poet's thought during the fifty years between which
+they were written--1835 and 1887. While in the "Paracelsus" passage it is
+the thought of the joy in the creator's soul for his creations, and the
+participation of mankind in this joy of progression while pleasure climbs
+its heights forever and forever, which occupies the poet's mind, in the
+later passage, there is no attempt at a definite conception of the divine
+nature. Force represented in the sunlight is described as developing life
+upon the earth. The thrill of this life-giving power is felt by all
+things, and is unquestioningly accepted and delighted in.
+
+                                          "Everywhere
+  Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime
+  Thrilling her to the heart of things: since there
+  No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew,
+  No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew
+  Glad through the inrush--glad nor more nor less
+  Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness,
+  Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread,
+  The universal world of creatures bred
+  By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise."
+
+Man alone questions. His mind reaches out for knowledge of the cause; he
+would know its nature. Man's mind will not give any definite answer to
+this question. But Prometheus offered an artifice whereby man's mind is
+satisfied. He drew sun's rays into a focus plain and true. The very sun in
+little: made fire burn and henceforth do man service. Denuded of its
+scientific and mystical symbolism, Browning thus makes the Prometheus myth
+teach his favorite doctrine, namely, that the image of love formed in the
+human heart by means of the burning glass supplied by sense and feeling is
+a symbol of infinite love.
+
+Daniel Bartoli, a Jesuit of the seventeenth century who is dyed and doubly
+dyed in superstition, is set up by Browning in the next poem simply to be
+knocked down again upon the ground that all the legendary saints he
+worshipped could not compare with a real woman the poet knows. The
+romantic story of the lady is told in Browning's most fascinating
+narrative style, so rapid and direct that it has all the force of a
+dramatic sketch. The heroine's claim upon the poet's admiration consists
+in her recognition of the sacredness of love, which she will not dishonor
+for worldly considerations, and finding her betrothed incapable of
+attaining her height of nobleness, she leaves him free.
+
+This story bears upon the poet's philosophy as it reflects his attitude
+toward human love, which he considers so clearly a revelation that any
+treatment of it not absolutely noble and true to the highest ideals is a
+sin against heaven itself.
+
+George Bubb Dodington is the black sheep of these later poems. He gives
+the poet an opportunity to let loose all his subtlety and sarcasm, while
+the reader may exercise his wits in discovering that the poet _assumes_ to
+agree with Dodington in his doubtful doctrine of serving the state with an
+eye always upon his own private welfare, and pretends to criticise him
+only for his method of attaining his ends. His method is to disclaim that
+he works for any other good than that of the State--a proposition so
+preposterous in his case that nobody would believe it. The poet then
+presents what purports to be the correct method of successful
+statesmanship--namely, to pose as a superior being endowed with the divine
+right to rule, treating everybody as his puppet, and entirely scornful of
+any criticisms against himself. If he will adopt this attitude he may
+change his tactics every year and the people, instead of suspecting his
+sincerity, will think that he has wise reasons beyond their insight for
+his changes. The poem is a powerful, intensely cynical argument against
+the imperialistic temper and in favor of liberal government. This means
+for the individual not only the right but the power to judge for himself,
+instead of being obliged to depend, because of his own inefficiency, upon
+the leadership of the over-man, whose intentions are unfortunately too
+seldom to be trusted.
+
+The poet called from the shades by Browning, Christopher Smart, is
+celebrated in the world of criticism for having only once in his life
+written a great poem. The eulogies upon the beauties of "The Song of
+David" might not be echoed by all lay readers of poetry; nor is it of any
+moment whether Browning actually agreed with the conclusions of the
+critics, since the episode is used merely as a text for discussing the
+problem of beauty versus truth in art. Should the poet's province be
+simply to record his vision of the beauty and the strength of nature and
+the universe--visions which come to him in moments of inspiration such as
+that which came once to Christopher Smart? Browning answers the question
+characteristically with his feet upon the earth. The visions of poets
+should not be considered as ends in themselves, but as material to be used
+for greater ends.
+
+The poet should find his inspiration in the human heart, and climb to
+heaven by its means, not investigate the heavens first. Diligently must he
+study mankind, and teach as man may through his knowledge.
+
+In "Francis Furini" the subject is the nude in art. The keynote is struck
+by the poet's declaring he will never believe the tale told by Baldinicci
+that Furini ordered all his pictures in which there were nude figures
+burned. He expresses his indignation at the tale vigorously at some
+length, showing plainly his own sympathies.
+
+The passage in the poem bearing more especially upon the present
+discussion is the lecture by Furini imagined by the poet to have been
+delivered before a London audience. It is a long and recondite speech in
+which the scientific and the intuitional methods of arriving at truth
+are compared. While the scientific method is acknowledged to be of value,
+the intuitional method is claimed as by far the more important.
+
+A philippic against Greek art and its imitation is delivered by the poet
+in the "Parleying with Gerard de Lairesse," whom he makes the scapegoat of
+his strictures, on the score of a book Lairesse wrote in which was
+described a walk through a Dutch landscape when every feature was
+transmogrified by classic imaginings.
+
+To this good soul, an old sepulcher struck by lightning became the tomb of
+Phaeton, and an old cartwheel half buried in the sand near by, the Chariot
+of the Sun.
+
+In a spirit of bravado Browning proceeds to show what he himself could
+make of a walk provided he condescended to illuminate it by classic
+metaphor and symbol, and a remarkable passage is the result. It occupies
+from the eighth to the twelfth stanza. It is meant to be in derision of a
+grandiloquent, classically embroidered style but so splendid is the
+language, so haunting the pictures, the symbolism so profound that it is
+as if a God were showing some poor weakling mortal how not to do it--and
+through his omniscience must perforce create something wondrously
+beautiful. The double feeling produced in reading this passage only adds
+to its interest. After thus classicizing in a manner that might make
+Euripides, himself, turn green with envy, he nonchalantly remarks:
+
+"Enough, stop further fooling," and to show how a modern poet greets a
+landscape he flings in the perfectly simple and irresistible little lyric:
+
+  "Dance, yellows, and whites and reds."
+
+The poet's strictures upon classicism are entirely consonant with his
+philosophy, placing as he does the paramount importance on living
+realities, "Do and nowise dream," he exclaims:
+
+  "Earth's young significance is all to learn;
+  The dead Greek love lies buried in its urn
+  Where who seeks fire finds ashes."
+
+The "Parleying" with Charles Avison is more a poem of moods than any of
+the others. The poet's profound appreciation of music is reflected in his
+claiming it as the highest artistic expression possible to man. Sadness
+comes to him, however, at the thought of the ephemeralness of its forms, a
+fact that is borne in on him because of the inadequateness of Avison's
+old march styled "grand." He finally emerges triumphantly from this mood
+of sadness through the realization that music is the most perfect symbol
+of the evolution of spirit, of which the central truth--
+
+  "The inmost care where truth abides in fulness"--
+
+as Paracelsus expresses it, remains always permanent, while the form is
+ever changing, but though ever changing it is of absolute value to the
+time when the spirit found expression in it. Furthermore, in any form once
+possessing beauty, by throwing one's self into its historical atmosphere
+the beauty may be regained.
+
+The poem has, of course, a still larger significance in relation to all
+forms of truth and beauty of which every age has had its living, immortal
+examples, the "broken arcs" which finally will make the perfect round,
+each arc perfect in itself, and thus the poet's final paean is joyous,
+"Never dream that what once lived shall ever die."
+
+The prologue of this series of poems prefigures the thought in a striking
+dialogue between Apollo and the Fates wherein the Fates symbolize the
+natural forces of life, behind which is Zeus or divine power; Apollo's
+light symbolizes the glamour which hope and aspiration throw over the
+events of human existence, without actually giving any assurance of its
+worth, and the wine of Bacchus symbolizes feeling, by means of which a
+perception of the absolute is gained. Man's reason, guided by the divine,
+accepts this revelation through feeling not as actual knowledge of the
+absolute which transcends all intellectual attempts to grasp it, but as a
+promise sufficiently assuring to take him through the ills and
+uncertainties of life with faith in the ultimate triumph of beauty and
+good.
+
+The epilogue, a dialogue between John Fust and his friends, brings home
+the thought once more in another form, emphasizing the fact that there can
+be no new realm of actual, palpable knowledge opened up to man beyond that
+which his intellect is able to perceive. Once having gained this knowledge
+of the failure of intellectual knowledge to solve what Whitman calls the
+"strangling problems" of life, man's part is to follow onward through
+ignorance.
+
+                                "Dare and deserve!
+  As still to its asymptote speedeth the curve,
+  So approximates Man--Thee, who reachable not,
+    Hast formed him to yearningly
+                              Follow thy whole
+  Sole and single omniscience!"
+
+It will be seen from this review of the salient points enlarged upon by
+Browning in these last groups of poems that he has deliberately set
+himself to harmonize the intellectual and the intuitional aspects of human
+consciousness. He has sought to join the hands of mind and spirit. The
+artistic exuberance of Paracelsus is supplemented by spiritual fervor. To
+the young Browning, the beauty of immortal, joyous life pursuing its
+heights forever was as a radiant vision, to the Browning who had grappled
+with the strangling problems of the century this beauty was not so
+distinctly seen, but its reality was felt with all the depth of an
+intensely spiritual nature--a nature moreover so absolutely fearless, that
+it could unflinchingly confront every giant of doubt, or of
+disillusionment which science in its pristine egotism had conjured up,
+saying "Keep to thine own province, where thou art indeed powerful; to the
+threshold of the eternal we may come through thy ministrations, but the
+consciousness of divine things cometh through the still small voice of the
+heart."
+
+Thus, while he accepted every law relating to phenomena which science has
+been able to formulate, he realized the futility of resting in a primal,
+wholly dehumanized energy, that is, something not greater but less than
+its own outcome, humanity. He was incapable of any such absurdity as
+Clifford's dictum that "Reason, intelligence and volition are properties
+of a complex which is made up of elements, themselves not rational, not
+intelligent, not conscious." Since Clifford's time, the marked differences
+between the processes of a psychic being like man, and the processes of
+nature have been so fully recognized and so carefully defined by
+psychologists that Browning's insistence upon making man the center whence
+truth radiates has had full confirmation.
+
+Theodore Merz has summed up these psychological conclusions in regard to
+the characteristics peculiar to man as distinguished from all the rest of
+the universe in the following words:
+
+    "There are two properties with which we are familiar through common
+    sense and ordinary reflection as belonging especially to the phenomena
+    of our inner self-conscious life, and these properties seem to lie
+    quite beyond the sphere and the possibilities of the ordinary methods
+    of exact research.
+
+    "As we ascend in the scale of human beings we become aware that they
+    exhibit a special kind of unity which cannot be defined, a unity
+    which, even when apparently lost in periods of unconsciousness, is
+    able to reestablish itself by the wonderful and indefinable property
+    called 'memory'--a center which can only be very imperfectly
+    localized--a together which is more than a mechanical sum; in fact
+    we rise to the conception of individuality, that which cannot be
+    divided and put together again out of its parts.
+
+    "The second property is still more remarkable. The world of the inner
+    processes which accompany the higher forms of nervous development in
+    human beings is capable of unlimited growth and it is capable of this
+    by a process of becoming external: it becomes external, and, as it
+    were, perpetuates itself in language, literature, science and art,
+    legislation, society, and the like. We have no analogue of this in
+    physical nature, where matter and energy are constant quantities and
+    where the growth and multiplication of living matter is merely a
+    conversion of existing matter and energy into special altered forms
+    without increase or decrease in quantity. But the quantity of the
+    inner thing is continually on the increase; in fact, this increase is
+    the only thing of interest in the whole world."
+
+Thus the modern psychologist and the poet who in the early days of the
+century said the soul was the only thing worth study join hands.
+
+The passage already referred to in "Francis Furini" presents most
+explicitly the objective or intellectual method and the subjective or
+intuitional method of the search for truth.
+
+Furini is made to question--
+
+                                          "Evolutionists!
+  At truth I glimpse from depths, you glance from heights,
+  Our stations for discovery opposites,
+  How should ensue agreement! I explain."
+
+He describes, then, how the search of the evolutionist for the absolute is
+outside of man. "'Tis the tip-top of things to which you strain." Arriving
+at the spasm which sets things going, they are stopped, and since having
+arrived at unconscious energy, they can go no further, they now drop down
+to a point where atoms somehow begin to think, feel, and know themselves
+to be, and the world's begun such as we recognize it. This is a true
+presentation of the attitude of physicists and chemists to-day, the latter
+especially holding that experiment proves that in the atoms themselves is
+an embryonic form of consciousness and will. From these is finally evolved
+at last self-conscious man. But after all this investigating on the part
+of the evolutionist what has been gained? Of power--that is, power to
+create nature or life, or even to understand it--man possesses no
+particle, and of knowledge, only just so much as to show that it ends in
+ignorance on every side. This is the result of the objective search for
+truth. But begin with man himself, and there is a fact upon which he can
+take a sure stand, his self-consciousness--a "togetherness," as Merz says,
+which cannot be explained mathematically by the adding up of atoms; and
+furthermore an inborn certainty that whatever is felt to be within had
+its rise or cause without: "thus blend the conscious I, and all things
+perceived in one Effect." Through this subjective perception of an
+all-powerful cause a reflex light is thrown back upon all that the
+investigations of the intellect have accomplished. The cause is no longer
+simply blind energy, but must itself be possessed of gifts as great and
+still greater than those with which the soul of man is endowed. The forces
+at work in nature thus become instinct with wonder and beauty, the good
+and evil of life reveal themselves as a means used by absolute Power and
+Love for the perfecting of the soul which made to know on and ever must
+know
+
+  "All to be known at any halting stage
+  Of [the] soul's progress, such as earth, where wage
+  War, just for soul's instruction, pain with joy,
+  Folly with wisdom, all that works annoy
+  With all that quiets and contents."
+
+To sum up--our investigations into Browning's thought show him to be a
+type primarily of the mystic. Mysticism in its most pronounced forms
+regards the emotions of the human mind as supreme. The mystic, instead of
+allowing the intellectual faculty to lead the way, degrades it to an
+inferior position and makes it entirely subservient to the feelings. In
+some moods Browning seems almost to belong to this pronounced type; for
+example, when he says in "A Pillar at Sebzevar," "Say not that we know,
+rather that we love, therefore we know enough."
+
+[Illustration: DAVID STRAUSS]
+
+It must be remembered, however, that he is not in either class of the
+supernatural mystic, one of which supposes truth to be gained by a fixed
+supernatural channel, the other that it is gained by extraordinary
+supernatural means. On the contrary, truth comes to Browning in pursuance
+of a regular law or fact of the inward sensibility, which may be defined
+in his case as a mode of intuition. His intuition of God, as we have seen,
+is based upon the feeling of love both in its human and its abstract
+aspects.
+
+But this is not all. Upon the intellectual side Browning accepted the
+conclusions of scientific investigation as far as phenomena were
+concerned, and while he denied its worth in giving direct knowledge of the
+Absolute, he recognized it as useful because of its very failure in
+strengthening the sense of the existence of a power transcending human
+conception. "What is our failure here but a triumph's evidence of the
+fulness of the days?" And, furthermore, with mystic love already in our
+hearts, all knowledge that the scientist may bring us of the phenomena of
+nature and life only adds immeasurably to our wonder and awe of the power
+which has brought these things to pass, thus "with much more knowledge"
+comes "always much more love."
+
+Once more, the poet's mysticism is tempered by a tinge of idealism. There
+are several passages in his poems, notably one already quoted from Furini,
+which show him to have had a perception of God directly through his own
+consciousness by means of what the idealist calls the higher reason. His
+perception, for instance, that whatever takes place within the
+consciousness had its rise without and that this external origin emanates
+from God is the idealist's way of arriving at the absolute.
+
+Thus we see that into Browning's religious conceptions enter the
+intuitions of the artistic consciousness as illustrated in Paracelsus
+where God is the divine artist joying in his creations, the intuitions of
+the intellect which finds in the failure of knowledge to probe the secrets
+of the universe the assurance of a transcendent power beyond human ken,
+the intuition of the higher reason which affirms God is, and the
+intuitions of the heart which promise that God is love, through whom is
+to come fulfilment of all human aspirations toward Beauty, Truth, and Love
+in immortality.
+
+If these are all points which have been emphasized, now by one, now by
+another, of the vast array of thinkers who have crowded the past century,
+there is no one who to my knowledge has so completely harmonized the
+various thought tendencies of the age, and certainly none who has clothed
+them in such a wealth of imaginative and emotional illustration.
+
+In these last poems Browning appears to borrow an apt term from Whitman,
+as the "Answerer" of his age. In them he has unquestioningly accepted the
+knowledge which science has brought, and, recognizing its relative
+character, has yet interpreted it in such a way as to make it subserve the
+highest ideals in ethics, religion, and art. Far from reflecting any
+degeneration in Browning's philosophy of life, these poems place on a
+firmer basis than ever thoughts prominent in his poetry from the first,
+while adding to these the profounder insight into life which life's
+experiences had brought him.
+
+The subject matter and form are no less remarkable than their thought. The
+variety in both is almost bewildering. Religion and fable, romance and
+philosophy, art and science all commingled in rich profusion; everything
+in language--talk almost colloquial, dainty lyrics full of exquisite
+emotion, and grand passages which present in sweeping images now the
+processes of cosmic evolution, now those of spiritual evolution, until it
+seems as if we had indeed been conducted to some vast mountain height,
+whence we can look forth upon the century's turbulent seas of thought,
+into which flows many a current from the past, while suspended above
+between the sea and sky, like the crucifix in Simons's wonderful symbolic
+picture of the Middle Ages, is the mystical form of divine love and joy
+which Browning has made symbolic of the nineteenth century.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+POLITICAL TENDENCIES
+
+
+In the political affairs of his own age and country Browning as a poet
+shows little interest. This may at first seem strange, for that he was
+deeply sympathetic with past historical movements indicating a growth
+toward democratic ideals in government is abundantly proved by his choice
+and treatment of historical epochs in which the democratic tendencies were
+peculiarly evident. Why then did he not give us dramatic pictures of the
+Victorian era, in which as perhaps in no other era of English history the
+yeast of political freedom has been steadily and quietly working?
+
+There were probably several reasons for his failure to make himself felt
+as an influence in the political world of his time. In the first place, he
+was preeminently a dramatic poet, and as such his interest was in the
+presentation and analysis of individual character as it might work itself
+out in a given historical environment. To deal with contemporaries in
+this analytic manner would be a difficult and delicate matter, and, as we
+see, in those instances where he did venture upon an analysis of English
+contemporaries, as in the case of Wiseman (Bishop Blougram), Carlyle in
+Bernard de Mandeville and in "George Bubb Dodington," the sketch of Lord
+Beaconsfield, he takes care to suppress every external circumstance which
+would lead to their identification, and to dwell only upon their
+intellectual or psychic aspects.
+
+A second reason is that the present is usually too near at hand to be used
+altogether effectively as dramatic material. Contemporary conditions of
+history seem to have an air of stateliness owing to the fact that every
+one is familiar with them, not only through talk and experience but
+through newspapers and magazines, while their larger, universal meanings
+cannot be seen at too close a range. If, however, past historical episodes
+and their tendencies can be so presented as to illustrate the tendencies
+of the present, then the needful artistic perspective is gained. In this
+manner, with a few minor exceptions, Browning has revealed the direction
+in which his political sympathies lay.
+
+When Browning was born, the first Napoleonic episode was nearing its
+close. Absolutism and militarism had in its lust for power and bloodshed
+slaughtered itself for the time being, and once more there was opportunity
+for the people of England to strive for their own enfranchisement.
+
+As a progressive ministry in England did not come into power until 1830,
+the struggles of the people were rewarded with little success during many
+years after the Battle of Waterloo. During the childhood and boyhood of
+Browning the events which from time to time marked the determination of
+the downtrodden Englishman to secure a larger measure of justice for
+himself were exciting enough to have made a strong impression upon the
+precocious mind of the incipient poet even in the seclusion of his
+father's library at Camberwell.
+
+The artificial prosperity which had buoyed up the workman during the war
+with France suddenly collapsed with the advent of peace after the Battle
+of Waterloo. Everything seemed to combine to make the affairs of the
+workingman desperate. Public business had been blunderingly administered,
+and while a fatuous Cabinet was congratulating the nation upon the
+flourishing state of the country, trade was actually almost at a
+standstill, and failures in business were the order of the day. To make
+matters worse, a wet summer and early frosts interfered with farming, and
+the result was that laborers and workmen could not find employment. A not
+unusual percentage of paupers in any given district was four fifths of the
+whole population. Thinking the farmers were to blame for the high price of
+bread, these starving people wreaked their vengeance on them by burning
+farm buildings, and machinery, and even stacks of corn and hay.
+
+[Illustration: CARDINAL WISEMAN]
+
+Instead of giving sympathy to these men in their desperate condition, a
+conservative government saw in them only rioters, and took the most
+stringent measures against them. They were tried by a special commission,
+and thirty-four of them were condemned to death, though it is recorded
+that only five of them were executed. The miners of Cornwall and Wales,
+the lace makers of Nottingham, and the iron workers of the Black Country,
+next broke out and the smashing of machinery continued. Finally there was
+a meeting of the artisans of London, Westminster, and Southwick in Spa
+Fields, Clerkenwall, which had been called by Harry Hunt, a man of
+property and education, who was known as a supporter of extreme measures,
+and the leader of the Radicals of that day. They met for the legitimate
+purpose, one would think, of considering the propriety of petitioning the
+Prince Regent and Parliament to adopt means of relieving the existing
+distress. One of the speakers, however, a poor doctor by the name of
+Watson, was of a more belligerent disposition. He made an inflammatory
+speech which ended by his seizing a tri-colored flag and marching toward
+the city followed by the turbulent rabble. On their way they seized the
+contents of a gunsmith's shop on Snow Hill, murdered a man, and finally
+were met opposite the Mansion House by the Lord Mayor, who, assisted by a
+strong body of police, arrested some of the leaders and dispersed the
+rest. The arrested persons were brought to trial and indicted for high
+treason by the Attorney General, but the jury, evidently thinking the
+indictment had taken too exaggerated a form, acquitted Watson, and the
+others were dismissed.
+
+The conservative Parliament was, however, so alarmed by these proceedings
+that, instead of seeking some way of removing the cause of the
+difficulties, it thought only of making restrictions for the protection of
+the person of the Regent, of the more effective prevention of seditious
+meetings and of surer punishment. And what were some of these measures?
+Debating societies, lecture halls and reading rooms were shut up. Even
+lectures on medicine, surgery and chemistry were prohibited. Though there
+was a possibility of getting a license to lecture from the magistrate, the
+law was interpreted in the narrowest spirit.
+
+Parliamentary reform began to be spoken of in 1819, when a resolution
+pledging the House of Commons to the consideration of the state of
+representation was rejected by a vote of one hundred and fifty-three to
+fifty-eight. This decision stirred up the reform spirit, and large
+meetings in favor of it were held. The people attending these meetings
+received military drilling and marched to their meetings in orderly
+processions, a fact naturally very disturbing to the government. When a
+great meeting was arranged at Manchester on the 16th of August, troops
+were accordingly sent to Manchester. The cavalry was ordered to charge the
+crowd, and although they used the flat side of their swords, the charge
+resulted in the killing of six persons and the wounding of some hundreds.
+The clash did not end here, for to offset the ministerial approval of the
+action of the magistrates and their decision that the meeting was illegal,
+the Common Council of London passed a resolution by a large majority
+declaring that the meeting was legal. A number of Whig noblemen also were
+on the side of the London Council and made similar motions. But the
+ministers, unmoved by these signs of the times, introduced bills in
+Parliament for the repression of disorder and the further restraining of
+public liberty. The bills, it is true, were strenuously opposed in both
+houses, but the eloquence expended against them was all to no purpose, the
+bills were passed, and reform for the time being was nipped in the bud.
+
+Although after this laws were gradually introduced by the ministers which
+tended very much to the betterment of conditions, the fire of reform did
+not burst out again with full fury until the time of the Revolution of
+July, in France, which it will be remembered was directed against the
+despotic King Charles X, and ended in his being deposed, when his crown
+was given to his distant cousin Louis Philippe. The success of the French
+in their stand against despotism caused a general revolutionary stir in
+several European countries, while in England the spirit of revolution
+showed itself in incendiary fires from one end of the country to the
+other.
+
+With Parliament itself full of believers in reform, the chief of the
+Cabinet, the Duke of Wellington, announced that the House of Commons did
+not need reform and that he would resist all proposals for a change. So
+great was the popular excitement at this announcement that the Duke could
+not venture to go forth to dine at the Guildhall for fear that he might be
+attacked.
+
+Such were the chief episodes in the forward advance of the people up to
+the time of the presentation of the Reform Bill in Parliament. This
+important measure has been described as the greatest organic change in the
+British Constitution that had taken place since the revolution of 1688.
+When this bill was finally passed it meant a transference of governmental
+control from the upper classes to the middle classes, and was the
+inauguration of a policy which has constantly added to the prosperity and
+well-being of the English people. The agitation upon this bill, introduced
+in the House by Lord John Russell, under the Premiership of Earl Grey, and
+a ministry favorable to reform, was filling the attention of all
+Englishmen to the exclusion of every other subject just at the time when
+Browning was emerging into manhood, 1831 and 1832, and though he has not
+commemorated in his poetry this great step in the political progress of
+his own century, his first play, written in 1837, takes up a period of
+English history in which a momentous struggle for liberty on the part of
+the people was in progress.
+
+Important as the Reform Bill was, it furnished no such picturesque
+episodes for a dramatist as did the struggle of Pym and Strafford under
+the despotic rule of King Charles I.
+
+In choosing this period for his play the poet found not only material
+which furnished to his hand a series of wonderfully dramatic situations,
+but in the three men about whom the action moves is presented an
+individuality and a contrast in character full of those possibilities for
+analysis so attractive to Browning's mind.
+
+Another point to be gained by taking this remote period of history was
+that his attitude could be supremely that of the philosopher of history.
+He could portray with fairness whatever worth of character he found to
+admire in the leaders upon either side, at the same time that he could
+show which possessed the winning principle--the principle of progress. In
+dealing with contemporary events a strong personal feeling is sure to gain
+the upper hand, and to be non-partisan and therefore truly dramatic is a
+difficult, if not an impossible, task. When we come to examine this play,
+we find that the character which unquestionably interested the poet most
+was Strafford's; not because of his political principles but because of
+his devotion to his King. Human love and loyalty in whomever manifested
+was always of the supremest interest to Browning, and, working upon any
+hints furnished by history, the poet has developed the character of
+Strafford in the light of his personal friendship for the King--a feeling
+so powerful that no fickle change of mood on the part of the King could
+alter it. Upon this fact of his personal relations to the King Strafford's
+actions in this great crisis have been interpreted and explained, though
+not defended, from the political point of view.
+
+Some wavering on the part of Pym is also explained upon the ground of his
+friendship for and his belief in Strafford, but mark the difference
+between the two men. Pym, once sure that Strafford is not on the side of
+progress, crushes out all personal feeling. He allows nothing to stand in
+the way of his political policy. With unflinching purpose he proceeds
+against his former friend, straight on to the impeachment for treason,
+straight on, like an inexorable fate, to the prevention of his rescue from
+execution. Browning's dramatic imagination is responsible for this last
+climax in which he brings the two men face to face. Here, in Pym's
+strength of will to serve England at any cost, mingled with the hope of
+meeting Strafford purged of all his errors in a future life, and in
+Strafford's response, "When we meet, Pym, I'd be set right--not now! Best
+die," is foreshadowed the ultimate triumph of the parliamentary over the
+monarchical principles of government, and the poet's own sympathy with the
+party of progress is made plain.
+
+It is interesting in the present connection to inquire whether there are
+any parallels between the agitation connected with the reform legislation
+of 1832 and the revolution at the time of Charles I which might send
+Browning's mind back to that period. The special point about which the
+battle raged in 1832 was the representation in Parliament. This was so
+irregular that it was absolutely unfair. In many instances large districts
+or towns would have fewer representatives than smaller ones, or perhaps
+none at all. Representation was more a matter of favoritism than of
+justice. The votes in Parliament were, therefore, not at all a true
+measure of the attitude of the country. It seems strange that so eminently
+sensible a reform should meet with such determined opposition. As usual,
+those in power feared loss of privilege. The House of Lords was the
+obstruction. The bill was in fact a step logically following upon the
+determination of the people of the time of Charles I that they would not
+submit to be levied upon for ship-money upon the sole authority of the
+King. They demanded that Parliament, which had not been assembled for ten
+years, should meet and decide the question. This question was not merely
+one of the war-tax or ship-money, but of whether the King should have the
+power to levy taxes upon the people without consent of Parliament.
+
+As every one knows, when the King finally consented to the assembling of
+Parliament, in April, 1840, he informed it that there would be no
+discussion of its demands until it had granted the war subsidies for which
+it had been asked. The older Vane added to the consternation of the
+assembly by announcing that the King would accept nothing less than the
+twelve subsidies which he had demanded in his message. In the face of this
+ultimatum the committee broke up without coming to a conclusion,
+postponing further consideration until the next day, but before they had
+had time to consider the matter the next day the King had decided to
+dissolve the Parliament.
+
+The King was forced, however, to reassemble Parliament again in the
+autumn. In this Parliament the people's party gained control, and many
+reforms were instituted. Led by such daring men as Pym, Hampden, Cromwell,
+and the younger Vane, resolutions were passed censuring the levying of
+ship-money, tonnage and poundage, monopolies, innovations in religion--in
+fact, all the grievances of the oppressed which had been ignored for a
+decade were brought to light and redressed by the House, quite regardless
+of the King's attitude.
+
+The chief of the abuses which it was bent upon remedying was the imposing
+of taxes upon the authority of the King and the persecution of the
+Puritans. But there was another grievance which received the attention of
+the Long Parliament, and which forms a close link with the reforms of
+1832--namely, the attempt to improve the system of representation in
+Parliament, an attempt which was partially carried into effect by Cromwell
+later. Under Charles II, however, things fell back into their old way and
+gradually went on from bad to worse until the tide changed, and the people
+became finally aroused after two hundred years to the need of a radical
+change. The blindness of the Duke of Wellington, declaring no reform was
+needed, is hardly less to be marveled at than that of King Charles
+declaring he would rule without Parliament. The King took the ground that
+the people had no right to representation in the government; the Minister,
+that only some of the people had a right.
+
+The horrors of revolution followed upon the blindness of the one, with its
+reactionary aftermath, while upon the other there was violence, it is
+true, and a revolution was feared, but through the wise measures of the
+liberal ministers no subversion of the government occurred. Violence
+reached such a pitch, however, that the castle of Nottingham in Derby was
+burned, the King's brother was dragged from his horse, and Lord
+Londonderry roughly treated. The mob at Bristol was so infuriated that Sir
+C. Wetherell, the Recorder of the city, who had voted against the bill,
+had to be escorted to the Guildhall by a hundred mounted gentlemen. Two
+men having been arrested, the mob attacked and destroyed the interior of
+the Mansion House, set fire to the Bishop's palace and to many other
+buildings. There was not only an enormous loss of property, but loss of
+life.
+
+A quieter demonstration at Birmingham carries us back, as it might have
+carried Browning, to the "great-hearted men" of the Long Parliament. A
+meeting was called which was attended by one hundred and fifty thousand
+persons, and resolutions were passed to the effect that if the Reform Bill
+were not passed they would refuse to pay taxes, as Hampden had refused to
+pay ship-money.
+
+The final act in this momentous drama was initiated with the introduction
+by Lord John Russell of the third Reform Bill in December, 1831. Again it
+was defeated in the House of Lords, whereupon some of the Cabinet wished
+to ask the King to create a sufficient number of new peers to force the
+bill through the House. Earl Grey was not at all in favor of this, but at
+last consented. This course was not welcome to the House of Lords, and the
+doubtful members in the House promised that if this suggestion were not
+carried into effect they would insure a sufficient majority in the House
+of Lords to carry the bill. This was done, but before the Lords went into
+committee a hostile motion postponing the disfranchisement clauses was
+carried. Then Earl Grey asked for the creation of new peers. As it would
+require the creating of about fifty new peers, the King refused, the
+ministry resigned and the Duke of Wellington came into power again. But
+his power, like that of Strafford, was broken. He had reached the point of
+recognizing that some reform was needed, but he could not persuade his
+colleagues of this. In the meantime the House of Commons passed a
+resolution of confidence in the Grey administration. Such determined
+opposition being shown not only in Parliament but by the people in various
+ways, Wellington felt his only course was resignation. William IV had,
+much to his chagrin, to recall Grey, but he escaped the necessity of
+creating a large number of peers, by asking the opposition in the House of
+Lords to withdraw their resistance to the bill. The Duke of Wellington and
+others thereupon absented themselves, and finding further obstruction was
+useless, the Lords at last passed the bill and it became law in June,
+1832.
+
+This national crisis through which Browning had lived could not fail to
+have made its impression on him. It is certainly an indication of the
+depth of his interest in the growth of liberalism that his first English
+subject, written only a few years subsequent to this momentous change in
+governmental methods, should have dealt with a period whose analysis and
+interpretation in dramatic form gave him every opportunity for the
+expression of his sympathy with liberal ideals. Broad-minded in his
+interpretation of Strafford's career, in love with his qualities of
+loyalty, and his capabilities of genuine affection for the vacillating
+Charles, he made Strafford the hero of his play, but it is Pym whom, in
+his play, he has exalted as the nation's hero, and into whose mouth he has
+put one of the greatest and most intensely pathetic speeches ever uttered
+by an Englishman. It is when he confronts Strafford at the last:
+
+  "Have I done well? Speak, England! Whose sole sake
+  I still have labored for, with disregard
+  To my own heart,--for whom my youth was made
+  Barren, my manhood waste, to offer up
+  Her sacrifice--this friend--this Wentworth here--
+  Who walked in youth with me, loved me, it may be,
+  And whom, for his forsaking England's cause,
+  I hunted by all means (trusting that she
+  Would sanctify all means) even to the block
+  Which waits for him. And saying this, I feel
+  No bitterer pang than first I felt, the hour
+  I swore that Wentworth might leave us, but I
+  Would never leave him: I do leave him now.
+  I render up my charge (be witness, God!)
+  To England who imposed it. I have done
+  Her bidding--poorly, wrongly,--it may be,
+  With ill effects--for I am weak, a man:
+  Still, I have done my best, my human best,
+  Not faltering for a moment. It is done.
+  And this said, if I say ... yes, I will say
+  I never loved but one man--David not
+  More Jonathan! Even thus I love him now:
+  And look for that chief portion in that world
+  Where great hearts led astray are turned again,
+  (Soon it may be, and, certes, will be soon:
+  My mission over, I shall not live long)--
+  Ay, here I know and talk--I dare and must,
+  Of England, and her great reward, as all
+  I look for there; but in my inmost heart,
+  Believe, I think of stealing quite away
+  To walk once more with Wentworth--my youth's friend
+  Purged from all error, gloriously renewed,
+  And Eliot shall not blame us. Then indeed ...
+  This is no meeting, Wentworth! Tears increase
+  Too hot. A thin mist--is it blood?--enwraps
+  The face I loved once. Then, the meeting be."
+
+At the same time that Browning was writing "Strafford," he was also
+engaged upon "Sordello." In that he has given expression to his democratic
+philosophy through his construction and interpretation of Sordello's
+character as a champion of the people as well as a poet who ushered in the
+dawn of the Italian literary Renaissance. As he made Paracelsus develop
+from a dependence upon knowledge as his sole guide in his philosophy of
+life into a perception of the place emotion must hold in any satisfactory
+theory of life, and put into his mouth a modern conception of evolution
+illuminated by his own artistic emotion, so he makes Sordello develop from
+the individualistic type to the socialist type of man, who is bent upon
+raising the masses of the people to higher conditions. The ideal of
+liberal forms of government was even in Sordello's time a growing one,
+sifting into Italy from Greek precedents, but Browning's Sordello sees
+something beyond either political or ecclesiastical espousal of the
+people's cause--namely, the espousal of the people's cause by the people
+themselves, the arrival of the self-governing democracy, an ideal much
+nearer attainment now than when Browning was writing:
+
+  "Two parties take the world up, and allow
+  No third, yet have one principle, subsist
+  By the same injustice; whoso shall enlist
+  With either, ranks with man's inveterate foes.
+  So there is one less quarrel to compose
+  The Guelf, the Ghibelline may be to curse--
+  I have done nothing, but both sides do worse
+  Than nothing. Nay, to me, forgotten, reft
+  Of insight, lapped by trees and flowers, was left
+  The notion of a service--ha? What lured
+  Me here, what mighty aim was I assured
+  Must move Taurello? What if there remained
+  A cause, intact, distinct from these, ordained
+  For me its true discoverer?"
+
+The mood here portrayed was one which might have been fostered in Browning
+in relation to his own time. He doubtless felt that neither the
+progressive movements in the state nor those in religion really touched
+upon the true principles of freedom for the individual. He might not have
+defined these principles to himself any more definitely than as a desire
+for the greatest happiness of the whole number. And even of such an ideal
+as that he had his doubts because of the necessity of his mind to find a
+logical use for evil in the world. This he could only do by supposing it a
+divine means for the development of the human soul in its sojourn in this
+life. Speaking in his own person in "Sordello," he gives expression to
+this doubt in the following passage in the third book:
+
+                          "I ask youth and strength
+  And health for each of you, not more--at length
+  Grown wise, who asked at home that the whole race
+  Might add the spirit's to the body's grace,
+  And all be dizened out as chiefs and bards.
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+              "----As good you sought
+  To spare me the Piazza's slippery stone
+  Or keep me to the unchoked canals alone,
+  As hinder Life the evil with the good
+  Which make up Living rightly understood."
+
+Still, though vague as to what the good for the whole people might be,
+there was no vagueness in his mind as to the people's right to possess the
+power to bring about their own happiness. Yet given the right principles,
+he would not have the attempt made to put them into practice all at once.
+
+His final attitude toward the problem of the best methods for bettering
+human conditions in the poem is, strictly speaking, that of the
+opportunist working a step toward his ideal rather than that of the
+revolutionist who would gain it by one leap. Sordello should realize that
+
+  "God has conceded two lights to a man--
+  One, of men's whole work, man's first
+  Step to the plan's completeness."
+
+Man's part is to take this first step, leaving the ultimate ideal to be
+worked out, as time goes, on by successive men. To reach at one bound the
+ideal would be to regard one's self as a god. Some such theory of action
+as this is the one which guides the Fabian socialist working in England
+to-day. Nothing is to be done to subvert the present order of society, but
+every opportunity is to be made the most of which will tend to the
+betterment of the conditions of the masses, until by degrees the
+socialist regime will become possible. Sordello was too much of the
+idealist to seize the opportunity when it came to him of helping the
+people by means of the Ghibelline power suddenly conferred upon him, and
+so he failed.
+
+This opportunist doctrine is one especially congenial to the English
+temperament and certainly has its practical advantages, if it is not so
+inspiring as the headlong idealism of a Pym, which just as surely has its
+disadvantages in the danger that the ideal will be ahead of humanity's
+power of seizing it and living it, and will therefore run the risk of
+being overturned by a reaction to the low plane of the past; especially
+does this danger become apparent when the way to the attainment of the
+ideal is paved with violence.
+
+While Browning was writing "Sordello," the preparation of which included a
+short trip to Italy, the Chartist agitation was going on in England. It
+may well, at that time, have been considered to demand an ideal beyond
+possibility of attainment, which was proved by its final utter
+annihilation. The workingmen's association led by Mr. Duncombe was
+responsible for a program in the form of a parliamentary petition which
+asked for six things. These were: universal suffrage, or the right of
+voting by every male of twenty-one years of age; vote by ballot; annual
+Parliaments; abolition of the property qualification for members of
+Parliament; members of Parliament to be paid for their services; equal
+electoral districts.
+
+There were two sorts of Chartists, moral-force Chartists and
+physical-force Chartists, the latter of whom did as much damage as
+possible in the agitation.
+
+The combined forces were led by Feargus O'Connor, an Irish barrister, who
+madly spent his force and energy for ten years in carrying forward the
+movement, and, at last, confronted by disagreement in the ranks of the
+Chartists and the Duke of Wellington and his troops, gave it up in
+despair. He was a martyr to the cause, for he took its failure so much to
+heart that he ended his days in a lunatic asylum.
+
+This final failure came many years after "Sordello" was finished, but the
+poet's conclusions in "Sordello" seem almost prophetic in the light of the
+passage in the poem already quoted, in which the poet declares himself
+grown wiser than he was at home, where he had asked the utmost for all
+men, and now realized that this cannot be attained in one leap.
+
+Agitation about the relations between England and Ireland were also
+filling public attention at this time, but most important of all the
+contemporary movements was the League for the Repeal of the Corn Laws. The
+story of the growth and the peaceful methods by which it attained its
+growth is one of the most interesting in the annals of England's political
+development. It meant the adoption of the great principle of free trade,
+to which England has since adhered. For eight years the agitation in
+regard to it was continued, during which great meetings were held,
+thousands of pounds were subscribed to the cause, and the names of Sir
+Richard Cobden and John Bright became famous as leaders in the righteous
+cause of untaxed food for the people. John Bright's account of how he
+became interested in the movement and associated himself with Cobden in
+the work, told in a speech made at Rochdale, gives a vivid picture of the
+human side of the problem which by the conservatives of the day was
+treated as a merely political issue:
+
+    "In the year 1841 I was at Leamington and spent several months there.
+    It was near the middle of September there fell upon me one of the
+    heaviest blows that can visit any man. I found myself living there
+    with none living of my house but a motherless child. Mr. Cobden
+    called upon me the day after that event, so terrible to me and so
+    prostrating. He said, after some conversation, 'Don't allow this
+    grief, great as it is, to weigh you down too much. There are at this
+    moment in thousands of homes in this country wives and children who
+    are dying of hunger--of hunger made by the law. If you come along with
+    me, we will never rest till we have got rid of the Corn Law.' We saw
+    the colossal injustice which cast its shadow over every part of the
+    nation, and we thought we saw the true remedy and the relief, and that
+    if we united our efforts, as you know we did, with the efforts of
+    hundreds and thousands of good men in various parts of the country, we
+    should be able to bring that remedy home, and to afford that relief to
+    the starving people of this country."
+
+The movement thus inaugurated was, as Molesworth declares, "without
+parallel in the history of the world for the energy with which it was
+conducted, the rapid advance it made, and the speedy and complete success
+that crowned its efforts; for the great change it wrought in public
+opinion and the consequent legislation of the country; overcoming
+prejudice and passion, dispelling ignorance and conquering powerful
+interests, with no other weapons than those of reason and that eloquence
+which great truths and strong conviction inspire."
+
+A signal victory for the League was gained in 1843, when the London
+_Times_, which up to that time had regarded the League with suspicion
+and even alarm, suddenly turned round and ranged itself with the advancing
+tide of progress by declaring, "The League is a great fact. It would be
+foolish, nay, rash, to deny its importance. It is a great fact that there
+should have been created in the homestead of our manufacturers
+(Manchester) a confederacy devoted to the agitation of one political
+question, persevering at it year after year, shrinking from no trouble,
+dismayed at no danger, making light of every obstacle. It demonstrates the
+hardy strength of purpose, the indomitable will, by which Englishmen
+working together for a great object are armed and animated."
+
+The final victory, however, did not come until three years later, when Sir
+Robert Peel, who became Prime Minister to defend the Corn Laws, announced
+that he had been completely convinced of their injustice, and that he was
+an "absolute convert to the free-trade principle, and that the
+introduction of the principle into all departments of our commercial
+legislation was, according to his intention, to be a mere question of time
+and convenience." This was in January, 1845, and shortly after, June,
+1846, the bill for the total repeal of the Corn Laws passed the House.
+
+How much longer it might have been before the opposition was carried is a
+question if it had not been for the failure of the grain crops and the
+widespread potato disease which plunged Ireland into a state of famine,
+and threatened the whole country with more or less of disaster.
+
+Even when this state of affairs became apparent in the summer of 1845
+there was still much delay. The Cabinet met and discussed and discussed;
+still Parliament was not assembled; and then it was that the Mansion House
+Relief Committee of Dublin drew up resolutions stating that famine and
+pestilence were approaching throughout the land, and impeaching the
+conduct of the Ministry for not opening the ports or calling Parliament
+together.
+
+But still Peel, already won over, could not take his Cabinet with him; he
+was forced to resign. Lord John Russell was called to form a ministry, but
+failed, when Peel was recalled, and the day was carried.
+
+Browning's brief but pertinent allusion to this struggle in "The
+Englishman in Italy" shows clearly how strongly his sympathies were with
+the League and how disgusted he was with the procrastination of Parliament
+in taking a perfectly obvious step for the betterment of the people.
+
+  "Fortnu, in my England at home,
+  Men meet gravely to-day
+  And debate, if abolishing Corn laws
+  Be righteous and wise
+  If 'twere proper, Scirocco should vanish
+  In black from the skies!"
+
+An occasional allusion or poem like this makes us aware from time to time
+of Browning's constant sympathy with any movement which meant good to the
+masses. Even if he had not written near the end of his life "Why I am a
+Liberal," there could be no doubt in any one's mind of his political
+ideals. In "The Lost Leader" is perhaps his strongest utterance upon the
+subject. The fact that it was called out by Wordsworth's lapse into
+conservatism after the horrors of the French Revolution had brought him
+and his _sans culotte_ brethren, Southey and Coleridge, to pause, a fact
+very possibly freshened in Browning's mind by Wordsworth's receiving a
+pension in 1842 and the poet-laureateship in 1843, does not affect the
+force of the poem as a personal utterance on the side of democracy.
+Browning, himself, considered the poem far too fierce as a portrayal of
+Wordsworth's case.[2] He evidently forgot Wordsworth, and thought only of
+a renegade liberal as he went on with the poem. It was written the same
+year that there occurred the last attempt to postpone the passing of the
+Anti-Corn Law Bill, when the intensity of feeling on the part of all who
+believed in progress was at its height, and the bare thought of a deserter
+from Liberal ranks would be enough to exasperate any man who had the
+nation's welfare at heart. That Browning's feeling at the time reached the
+point not only of exasperation but of utmost scorn for any one who was not
+on the liberal side is shown most forcibly in the bitter lines:
+
+  "Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
+    One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
+  One more devil's triumph and sorrow for angels,
+    One more wrong to man, one more insult to God!"
+
+Browning speaks of having thought of Wordsworth at an unlucky juncture.
+
+Whatever the exact episode which called forth the poem may have been, we
+are safe in saying that at a time when Disraeli was attacking Sir Robert
+Peel because of his honesty in avowing his conversion to free trade, and
+because of his bravery in coming out from his party, in breaking up his
+cabinet and regardless of all costs in determining to carry the bill or
+resign, and finally carrying it in the face of the greatest odds--at
+such a time, when a great conservative leader had shown himself capable of
+being won over to a great liberal principle; the spectacle of a deserter
+from the cause, and that deserter a member of one's own brotherhood of
+poets, would be especially hard to bear.
+
+One feels a little like asking why did not Browning let his enthusiasm
+carry him for once into a contemporary expression of admiration for Sir
+Robert Peel? Perhaps the tortuous windings of parliamentary proceedings
+obscured to a near view the true greatness of Peel's action.
+
+The year of this great change in England's policy was the year of Robert
+Browning's marriage and his departure for Italy, where he lived for
+fifteen years. During this time and for some years after his return to
+England there is no sign that he was taking any interest in the political
+affairs of his country. Human character under romantic conditions in a
+social environment, or the thought problems of the age, as we have already
+seen, occupied his attention, and for the subject matter of these he more
+often than not went far afield from his native country.
+
+In "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau" is the poet's first deliberate portrayal
+of a person of contemporary prominence in the political world. The
+alliance of Napoleon III with England brought his policy of government
+into strong contrast with that of the liberal leaders in English politics,
+a contrast which had been emphasized through Lord Palmerston's sympathy
+with the _coup d'etat_.
+
+The news of the manner in which Louis Napoleon had carried out his policy
+of smashing the French constitution caused horror and consternation in
+England, and the Queen at once gave instructions that nothing should be
+done by her ambassador in Paris which could be in any way construed as an
+interference in the internal affairs of France. Already, however, Lord
+Palmerston had expressed to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs his
+entire approbation in the act of Napoleon and his conviction that he could
+not have acted otherwise than as he had done. When this was known, the
+Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, wrote Palmerston a letter, causing his
+resignation, which was accepted very willingly by the Queen. The letter
+was as follows:
+
+    "While I concur in the foreign policy of which you have been the
+    adviser, and much as I admire the energy and ability with which it has
+    been carried into effect, I cannot but observe that misunderstandings
+    perpetually renewed, violations of prudence and decorum too
+    frequently repeated, have marred the effects which ought to have
+    followed from a sound policy and able admirers. I am, therefore, most
+    reluctantly compelled to come to the conclusion that the conduct of
+    foreign affairs can no longer be left in your hands with advantage to
+    the country."
+
+When England's fears that Louis Napoleon would emulate his illustrious
+predecessor and invade her shores were allayed, her attitude was modified.
+She forgot the horrors of the _coup d'etat_ and formed an alliance with
+him, and her hospitable island became his refuge in his downfall.
+
+A prominent figure in European politics for many years, Louis Napoleon had
+just that combination of greatness and mediocrity which would appeal to
+Browning's love of a human problem. Furthermore, Napoleon was brought very
+directly to the poet's notice through his Italian campaign and Mrs.
+Browning's interest in the political crisis in Italy, which found
+expression in her fine group of Italian patriotic poems.
+
+The question has been asked, "Will the unbiased judgment of posterity
+allow to Louis Napoleon some extenuating circumstances, or will it
+pronounce an unqualified condemnation upon the man who, for the sake of
+consolidating his own power and strengthening his corrupt government,
+spilled the blood of no less than a hundred thousand Frenchmen?"
+
+When all Europe was putting to itself some such question as this, and
+answering it with varying degrees of leniency, Browning conceived the idea
+of making Napoleon speak for himself, and at the same time he added what
+purports to be the sort of criticism of him indulged in by a Thiers or a
+Victor Hugo. The interest of the poem centers in Napoleon's own
+vindication of himself as portrayed by Browning. What Browning wrote of
+the poem in a letter to a friend in 1872 explains fully his aim, as well
+as showing by indirection, at least, how much he was interested in
+political affairs at this time, though so little of this interest crops
+out in his poetry: "I think in the main he meant to do what I say, and but
+for weakness--grown more apparent in his last years than formerly--would
+have done what I say he did not. I thought badly of him at the beginning
+of his career, _et pour cause_; better afterward, on the strength of the
+promises he made and gave indications of intending to redeem. I think him
+very weak in the last miserable year. At his worst I prefer him to
+Thiers's best." At another time he wrote: "I am glad you like what the
+editor of the _Edinburgh_ calls my eulogium on the Second Empire, which it
+is not, any more than what another wiseacre affirms it to be, 'a
+scandalous attack on the old constant friend of England.' It is just what
+I imagine the man might, if he pleased, say for himself."
+
+Browning depicts the man as perfectly conscious of his own limitations. He
+recognizes that he is not the genius, nor the creator of a new order of
+things, but that his power lies in his faculty of taking an old ideal and
+improving upon it. He contends that in following out his special gifts as
+a conservator he is doing just what God intended him to do, and as to his
+method of doing it that is his own affair. God gives him the commission
+and leaves it to his human faculties to carry it out, not inquiring what
+these are, but simply asking at the end if the commission has been
+accomplished.
+
+Once admit these two things--namely, that his nature, though not of the
+highest, is such as God gave him, and his lack of responsibility in regard
+to any moral ideal, so that he accomplishes the purpose of this
+nature--and a loophole is given for any inconsistencies he may choose to
+indulge in in bringing about that strengthening of an old ideal in which
+he believes. The old ideal is, of course, the monarchical principle of
+government, administered, however, in such a manner that it will be for
+the good of society in all its complex manifestations of to-day. His
+notion of society's good consists in a balancing of all its forces,
+secured by the smoothing down of any extreme tendencies, each having its
+orbit marked but no more, so that none shall impede the other's path.
+
+  "In this wide world--though each and all alike,
+  Save for [him] fain would spread itself through space
+  And leave its fellow not an inch of way."
+
+Browning makes him indulge in a curiously sophisticated view of the
+relativity of good and evil in the course of his argument, to the effect
+that since there is a further good conceivable beyond the utmost earth can
+realize, therefore to change the agency--the evil whereby good is brought
+about, try to make good do good as evil does--would be just as foolish as
+if a chemist wanting white and knowing that black ingredients were needed
+to make the dye insisted these should be white, too. A bad world is that
+which he experiences and approves. A good world he does not want in which
+there would be no pity, courage, hope, fear, sorrow, joy--devotedness, in
+short--which he believes form the ultimate allowed to man; therefore it
+has been his policy not to do away with the evil in the society he is
+saving. To mitigate, not to cure, has been his aim.
+
+Browning would, himself, answer the sophistry, here, by showing that evil
+though permitted by divine power was only a means of good through man's
+working against whatever he conceives to be evil with the whole strength
+of his being. To deliberately follow the policy of conserving evil would
+be in the end to annihilate the good. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau could
+not see so far as this.
+
+It is not astonishing that with such a policy as this his methods of
+carrying it out might seem somewhat dubious if not positively criminal.
+His departure from his early idealism is excused for the reason that
+idealism is not practicable when the region of talk is left for the real
+action of life. Every step in his own aggrandizement is apologized for on
+the ground that what needed to be accomplished could only be done by a
+strong hand and that strong hand his own. He was in fact an unprincipled
+utilitarian as Browning presents him, who spoiled even what virtue resides
+in utilitarianism by letting his care for saving society be too much
+influenced by his desire for personal glory. One ideal undertaking he
+permitted himself, the freeing of Italy from the Austrian yoke. But he was
+not strong enough for any such high flight of idealism, as the sequel
+proved.
+
+Browning does not bring out in the poem the Emperor's real reasons for
+stopping short in the Italian campaign, which certainly were sufficient
+from a practical standpoint, but as Archibald Forbes says in his "Life of
+Napoleon," should have been thought of before he published his program of
+freedom to Italy "from the Alps to the Adriatic." "Even when he addressed
+the Italians at Milan," continues Forbes, "the new light had not broken in
+upon him which revealed the strength of the quadrilateral, the cost of
+expelling the Austrians from Venetia, and the conviction that further
+French successes would certainly bring mobilized Germany into the field.
+That new light seems to have flashed upon Napoleon for the first time from
+the stern Austrian ranks on the day of Solferino. It was then he realized
+that should he go forward he would be obliged to attack in front an enemy
+entrenched behind great fortresses, and protected against any diversion on
+his flanks by the neutrality of the territories surrounding him."
+
+Mrs. Browning, whose consternation and grief over Villafranca broke out in
+burning verse, yet made a defence of Napoleon's action here which might
+have been worked into Browning's poem with advantage. She wrote to John
+Foster that while Napoleon's intervention in Italy overwhelmed her with
+joy it did not dazzle her into doubts as to the motive of it, "but
+satisfied a patient expectation and fulfilled a logical inference. Thus it
+did not present itself to my mind as a caprice of power, to be followed
+perhaps by an onslaught on Belgium and an invasion of England. Have we not
+watched for a year while every saddle of iniquity has been tried on the
+Napoleonic back, and nothing fitted? Wasn't he to crush Piedmontese
+institutions like so many eggshells? Was he ever going away with his army,
+and hadn't he occupied houses in Genoa with an intention of bombarding the
+city? Didn't he keep troops in the north after Villafranca on purpose to
+come down on us with a grand duke or a Kingdom of Etruria and Plon-Plon to
+rule it? And wouldn't he give back Bologna to the Pope?... Were not
+Cipriani, Farini and other patriots his 'mere creatures' in treacherous
+correspondence with the Tuileries 'doing his dirty work'?" Of such
+accusations as these the intelligent English journals were full, but she
+maintains that against "The Inane and Immense Absurd" from which they were
+born is to be set "a nation saved." She realized also how hard Napoleon's
+position in France must be to maintain "forty thousand priests with
+bishops of the color of Monseigneur d'Orleans and company, having, of
+course, a certain hold on the agricultural population which forms so large
+a part of the basis of the imperial throne. Then add to that the parties
+who use this Italian question as a weapon simply."
+
+Many of Napoleon's own statements have furnished Browning with the
+arguments used in the apology. After deliberately destroying the
+constitution, for example, and himself being the cause of the violence and
+bloodshed in Paris, he coolly addressed the people in the following
+strain, in which we certainly recognize Hohenstiel-Schwangau:
+
+"Frenchmen! the disturbances are appeased. Whatever may be the decision of
+the people, society is saved. The first part of my task is accomplished.
+The appeal to the nation, for the purpose of terminating the struggle of
+parties, I knew would not cause any serious risk to the public
+tranquillity. Why should the people have risen against me? If I do not
+any longer possess your confidence--if your ideas are changed--there is no
+occasion to make precious blood flow; it will be sufficient to place an
+adverse vote in the urn. I shall always respect the decision of the
+people."
+
+His cleverness in combining the idea of authority with that of the idea of
+obeying the will of the people is curiously illustrated in his speech at
+the close of his dictatorship, during which it must be confessed that he
+had done excellently well for the country--so well, indeed, that even the
+socialists were ready to cry "_Vive l'Empereur!_"
+
+    "While watching me reestablish the institutions and reawaken the
+    memories of the Empire, people have repeated again and again that I
+    wished to reconstitute the Empire itself. If this had been so the
+    transformation would have been accomplished long ago; neither the
+    means nor the opportunities would have been lacking.... But I have
+    remained content with that I had. Resolved now, as heretofore, to do
+    all in my power for France and nothing for myself, I would accept any
+    modification of the present state of things only if forced by
+    necessity.... If parties remain quiet, nothing shall be changed. But
+    if they endeavor to sap the foundations of my government; if they deny
+    the legitimacy of the result of the popular vote; if, in short, they
+    continually put the future of the country in jeopardy, then, but only
+    then, it might be prudent to ask the people for a new title which
+    would irrevocably fix on my head the power with which they have
+    already clothed me. But let us not anticipate difficulties; let us
+    preserve the Republic. Under its banner I am anxious to inaugurate
+    once more an epoch of reconciliation and pardon; and I call on all
+    without distinction who will frankly cooperate with me for the public
+    good."
+
+In contrast to such fair-sounding phrases Napoleon was capable of the most
+dishonorable tactics in order to gain his ends. Witness the episode of his
+tempting Bismarck with offers of an alliance against Austria at the same
+time that he was treating secretly with Francis Joseph for the cession of
+Venetia in return for Silesia. And while negotiating secretly and
+separately with these two sworn enemies, he pretended to be so
+disinterested as to suggest the submission of their quarrel to a European
+congress.
+
+Browning has certainly presented a good portrait of the man as the history
+of his own utterances contrasted with the history of his actions proves.
+In trying to bridge with this apology the discrepancies between the two he
+has, however, attributed to Louis Napoleon a degree of self-consciousness
+beyond any ever evinced by him. The principle of imperialism was a
+conviction with him. That he desired to help the people of France and to a
+great extent succeeded, is true; that he combined with this desire the
+desire of power for himself is true; that he used unscrupulous means to
+gain whatever end he desired when such were necessary is true; but that he
+was conscious of his own despicable traits to the extent that the poet
+makes him conscious of them is most unlikely. Nor is it likely that he
+would defend himself upon any such subtle ground as that his character and
+temperament being the gift of God he was bound to follow out his nature in
+order that God's purposes might be accomplished. It is rather an
+explanation of his life from the philosopher's or psychologist's
+standpoint than a self-conscious revelation. It is none the less
+interesting on this account, while the scene setting gives it a thoroughly
+human and dramatic touch.
+
+Whatever may be said of Napoleon himself, his rule was fraught with
+consequences of import for the whole of Europe, not because of what he
+was, but because of what he was not. He was an object lesson on the
+fallacy of trying to govern so that all parties will be pleased by
+autocratically keeping each one from fully expressing itself. The result
+is that each grows more aware of the suppression than of the amount of
+freedom allowed to it, and nobody is pleased. When added to such a policy
+as this is the surmounting desire for power and the Machiavellian
+determination to attain it by any means, fair or foul, a principle of
+statecraft which by the middle of the century could not be practised in
+its most acute form without arousing the most severe criticism, his power
+carried within it the seeds of destruction.
+
+It has been said that "never in the history of the world has one man
+undertaken a task more utterly beyond the power of mortal man than that
+which Louis Napoleon was pledged to carry through." He professed to be at
+one and the same time the elect sovereign of the people, a son of the
+revolution, a champion of universal suffrage, and an adversary of the
+demagogues. In the first of these characters he was bound to justify his
+elevation by economic and social reforms, in his second character he had
+to destroy the last trace of political liberty. He had, in fact, assumed
+various utterly incompatible attitudes, and the day that the masses found
+themselves deceived in their expectations, and the middle classes found
+their interests were betrayed, reaction was inevitable.
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE]
+
+In spite of his heinous faults, however, historians have grown more and
+more inclined to admit that Napoleon filled for a time a necessary niche
+in the line of progress, just that step which Browning makes him say
+the genius will recognize that he fills--namely, to
+
+  "Carry the incompleteness on a stage,
+  Make what was crooked straight, and roughness smooth,
+  And weakness strong: wherein if I succeed,
+  It will not prove the worst achievement, sure
+  In the eyes at least of one man, one I look
+  Nowise to catch in critic company:
+  To-wit, the man inspired, the genius, self
+  Destined to come and change things thoroughly.
+  He, at least, finds his business simplified,
+  Distinguishes the done from undone, reads
+  Plainly what meant and did not mean this time
+  We live in, and I work on, and transmit
+  To such successor: he will operate
+  On good hard substance, not mere shade and shine."
+
+That is, at a time when Europe was seething with the idea of a new order,
+in which the ideal of nationality was to take the place of such decaying
+ideas as the divine right of kings, balance of power, and so on, Napoleon
+held on to these ideas just long enough to prevent a general
+disintegration of society. He held in his hands the balance of power until
+the nations began to find themselves, and in the case of Italy actually
+helped on the triumph of the new order.
+
+It is interesting to note in this connection that one of the principal
+factors in the making of Gladstone into the stanch liberal which he
+became was the freeing of Italy, in which Napoleon had so large a share.
+Gladstone himself wrote in 1892 of the events which occurred in the fifth
+decade: "Of the various and important incidents which associated me almost
+unawares with foreign affairs ... I will only say that they all
+contributed to forward the action of those home causes more continuous in
+their operation, which, without in any way effacing my old sense of
+reverence for the past, determined for me my place in the present and my
+direction toward the future." In 1859 Gladstone dined with Cavour at
+Turin, when the latter had the opportunity of explaining his position and
+policy to the man whom he considered "one of the sincerest and most
+important friends that Italy had." But as his biographer says, Gladstone
+was still far from the glorified democracy of the Mazzinian propaganda,
+and expressed his opinion that England should take the stand that she
+would be glad if Italian unity proved feasible, "but the conditions of it
+must be gradually matured by a course of improvement in the several
+states, and by the political education of the people; if it cannot be
+reached by these means, it hardly will by any others; and certainly not by
+opinions which closely link Italian reconstruction with European
+disorganization and general war." Yet he was as distressed as Mrs.
+Browning at the peace of Villafranca, about which he wrote: "I little
+thought to have lived to see the day when the conclusion of a peace should
+in my own mind cause disgust rather than impart relief." By the end of the
+year he thought better of Napoleon and expressed himself again somewhat in
+the same strain as Mrs. Browning, to the effect that the Emperor had
+shown, "though partial and inconsistent, indications of a genuine feeling
+for the Italians--and far beyond this he has committed himself very
+considerably to the Italian cause in the face of the world. When in reply
+to all that, we fling in his face the truce of Villafranca, he may
+reply--and the answer is not without force--that he stood single-handed in
+a cause when any moment Europe might have stood combined against him. We
+gave him verbal sympathy and encouragement, or at least criticism; no one
+else gave him anything at all. No doubt he showed then that he had
+undertaken a work to which his powers were unequal; but I do not think
+that, when fairly judged, he can be said to have given proof by that
+measure of insincerity or indifference."
+
+Gladstone's gradual and forceful emancipation into the ranks of the
+liberals may be followed in the fascinating pages of Morley's "Life," who
+at the end declares that his performances in the sphere of active
+government were beyond comparison. Gladstone's own summary of his career
+gives a glimpse of what these performances were as well as an
+interpretation of the century and England's future growth which indicate
+that had he had another twenty years in which to progress, perhaps fewer,
+he would beyond all doubt have become an out and out social democrat.
+
+    "The public aspect of the period which closes for me with the fourteen
+    years (so I love to reckon them) of my formal connection with
+    Midlothian is too important to pass without a word. I consider it as
+    beginning with the Reform Act of Lord Grey's government. That great
+    act was for England, improvement and extension: for Scotland it was
+    political birth, the beginning of a duty and a power, neither of which
+    had attached to the Scottish nation in the preceding period. I rejoice
+    to think how the solemnity of that duty has been recognized, and how
+    that power has been used. The threescore years offer as the pictures
+    of what the historian will recognize as a great legislative and
+    administrative period--perhaps, on the whole, the greatest in our
+    annals. It has been predominantly a history of emancipation--that is,
+    of enabling man to do his work of emancipation, political, economical,
+    social, moral, intellectual. Not numerous merely, but almost
+    numberless, have been the causes brought to issue, and in every one of
+    them I rejoice to think that, so far as my knowledge goes, Scotland
+    has done battle for the right.
+
+    "Another period has opened and is opening still--a period possibly of
+    yet greater moral dangers, certainly a great ordeal for those classes
+    which are now becoming largely conscious of power, and never
+    heretofore subject to its deteriorating influences. These have been
+    confined in their actions to the classes above them, because they were
+    its sole possessors. Now is the time for the true friend of his
+    country to remind the masses that their present political elevation is
+    owing to no principles less broad and noble than these--the love of
+    liberty, of liberty for all without distinction of class, creed or
+    country, _and the resolute preference of the interests of the whole_
+    to any interest, be it what it may, of a narrower scope."
+
+Mr. Gladstone entered Parliament at twenty-three, in 1832, and a year
+later Browning, at twenty-one, printed his first poem, "Pauline." The
+careers of the two men ran nearly parallel, for Browning died in 1889, on
+the day of the publication of his last volume of poems, and Gladstone's
+retirement from active life took place in 1894, shortly after the defeat
+of his second Home Rule Bill. Though there is nothing to show that these
+two men came into touch with each other during their life, and while it is
+probable that Browning would not have been in sympathy with many of the
+aspects of Gladstone's mentality, there is an undercurrent of similarity
+in their attitude of mind toward reform. The passage in "Sordello" already
+referred to, written in 1840, might be regarded almost as a prophecy of
+the sort of leader Gladstone became. I have said of that passage that it
+expressed the ideal of the opportunist, not that of the revolutionary.
+Opportunist Mr. Gladstone was often called by captious critics, but any
+unbiased reader following his career now as a whole will see, as Morley
+points out, that whenever there was a chance of getting anything done it
+was generally found that he was the only man with courage and resolution
+enough to attempt it.
+
+A distinction should be made between that sort of opportunism which
+_waits_ upon the growth of conditions favorable to the taking of a short
+step in amelioration, and what might be called militant opportunism,
+which, at all times, seizes every opportunity to take a step in the
+direction of an evolving, all-absorbing ideal. Is not this the opportunism
+of both a Browning and a Gladstone? Such a policy at least tacitly
+acknowledges that the law of evolution is the law that should be followed,
+and that the mass of the people as well as the leader have their share in
+the unfolding of the coming ideal, though their part in it may be less
+conscious than his and though they may need his leadership to make the
+steps by the way clear.
+
+The other political leader of the Victorian era with whom Gladstone came
+most constantly into conflict was Disraeli, of whom Browning in "George
+Bubb Dodington" has given a sketch in order to draw a contrast between the
+unsuccessful policy of a charlatan of the Dodington type and that of one
+like Disraeli. The skeptical multitude of to-day cannot be taken in by
+declarations that the politician is working only for their good, and if he
+frankly acknowledged that he is working also for his own good they would
+have none of him. The nice point to be decided is how shall he work for
+his own good and yet gain control of the multitude. Dodington did not know
+the secret, but according to Browning Disraeli did, and what is the
+secret? It seems to be an attitude of absolute self-assurance, a disregard
+of consistency, a scorn of the people he is dealing with, and a pose
+suggesting the play of supernatural forces in his life.
+
+This is a true enough picture of the real Disraeli, who seems to have had
+a leaning toward a belief in spiritualism, and who was notorious for his
+unblushing changes of opinion and for a style of oratory in which his
+points were made by clever invective and sarcasm hurled at his opponents
+instead of by any sound, logical argument, it being, indeed one of his
+brilliant discoveries that "wisdom ought to be concealed under folly, and
+consistency under caprice."
+
+Many choice bits of history might be given in illustration of Browning's
+portrayal of him; for example, speaking against reform, he exclaims:
+"Behold the late Prime Minister and the Reform Ministry! The spirited and
+snow-white steeds have gradually changed into an equal number of sullen
+and obstinate donkeys, while Mr. Merryman, who, like the Lord Chancellor,
+was once the very life of the ring, now lies his despairing length in the
+middle of the stage, with his jokes exhausted and his bottle empty."
+
+As a specimen of his quickness in retort may be cited an account of an
+episode which occurred at the time when he came out as the champion of the
+Taunton Blues. In the course of his speech he "enunciated," says an
+anonymous writer of the fifties, "one of those daring historical paradoxes
+which are so signally characteristic of the man: 'Twenty years ago' said
+the Taunton Blue hero, 'tithes were paid in Ireland more regularly than
+now!'
+
+"Even his supporters appeared astounded by this declaration.
+
+"'How do you know?' shouted an elector.
+
+"'I have read it,' replied Mr. Disraeli.
+
+"'Oh, oh!' exclaimed the elector.
+
+"'I know it,' retorted Disraeli, 'because I have read, and you' (looking
+daggers at his questioner) 'have not.'
+
+"This was considered a very happy rejoinder by the friends of the
+candidate, and was loudly cheered by the Blues.
+
+"'Didn't you write a novel?' again asked the importunate elector, not very
+much frightened even by Mr. Disraeli's oratorical thunder and the
+sardonical expression on his face.
+
+"'I have certainly written a novel,' Mr. Disraeli replied; 'but I hope
+there is no disgrace in being connected with literature.'
+
+"'You are a curiosity of literature, you are,' said the humorous elector.
+
+"'I hope,' said Mr. Disraeli, with great indignation, 'there is no
+disgrace in having written that which has been read by hundreds of
+thousands of my fellow-countrymen, and which has been translated into
+every European language. I trust that one who is an author by the gift of
+nature may be as good a man as one who is Master of the Mint by the gift
+of Lord Melbourne.' Great applause then burst forth from the Blues. Mr.
+Disraeli continued, 'I am not, however, the puppet of the Duke of
+Buckingham, as one newspaper has described me; while a fellow laborer in
+the same vineyard designated me the next morning, "the Marleybone
+Radical." If there is anything on which I figure myself it is my
+consistency.'
+
+"'Oh, oh!' exclaimed many hearers.
+
+"'I am prepared to prove it,' said Mr. Disraeli, with menacing energy. 'I
+am prepared to prove it, and always shall be, either in the House of
+Commons or on the hustings, considering the satisfactory manner in which I
+have been attacked, but I do not think the attack will be repeated.'"
+
+It seems extraordinary that such tactics of bluff could take a man onward
+to the supreme place of Prime Minister. Possibly it was just as much owing
+to his power to amuse as to any of the causes brought out by Browning. Is
+there anything the majority of mankind loves more than a laugh?
+
+The conflicts of Disraeli and Gladstone form one of the most remarkable
+episodes of nineteenth-century politics. One is tempted to draw a parallel
+between Napoleon III and Disraeli, whose tactics were much the same,
+except that Disraeli was backed up by a much keener intellect. Possibly he
+held a part in English politics similar to that held by Napoleon in
+European politics--that is, he conserved the influences of the past long
+enough to make the future more sure of itself. Browning, however,
+evidently considered him nothing more than a successful charlatan.
+
+When Browning wrote, "Why I Am a Liberal," in 1885, liberalism in English
+politics had reached its climax in the nineteenth century through the
+introduction by Mr. Gladstone, then Premier for the third time, of his
+Home Rule Bill. The injustices suffered by the Irish people and the
+horrible atrocities resulting from these had had their effect upon Mr.
+Gladstone and had taken him the last great step in his progress toward
+freedom. The meeting at which this bill was introduced has been described
+as the greatest legislative assembly of modern times. The House was full
+to overflowing, and in a brilliant speech of nearly four hours the veteran
+leader held his audience breathless as he unfolded his plans for the
+betterment of Irish conditions. We are told that during the debates that
+followed there was a remarkable exhibition of feeling--"the passions, the
+enthusiasm, the fear, and hope, and fury and exultation, sweeping, now
+the surface, now stirring to its depths the great gathering." The bill,
+which included, besides the founding of an Irish Parliament in Dublin,
+which would have the power to deal with all matters "save the Crown, the
+Army and Navy, Foreign and Colonial Policy, Trade, Navigation, Currency,
+Imperial Taxation, and the Endowment of Churches," also provided that
+Ireland should annually contribute to the English exchequer the sum of
+L3,243,000.
+
+Eloquence, enthusiasm, exultation--all came to naught. The bill did not
+even suit the liberals, the bargain from a financial point of view being
+regarded as hard. It was defeated in Parliament and fared no better when
+an appeal was made to the country, and Mr. Gladstone resigned. In nine
+months, however, a general election returned him to office again, and
+again he introduced a Home Rule Bill, and though it passed the Commons, it
+was overwhelmingly defeated in the House of Lords.
+
+It is pleasant to reflect that in this last act of a noble and brilliant
+career spent in the interests of the ever-growing ideals of democracy
+Gladstone had the sympathy of Browning, shown by his emphatic expression
+of "liberal sentiments" at a momentous crisis, when a speech on the
+liberal side even from the mouth of a poet counted for much.
+
+As we have seen, the reflections in Browning's poetry of his interest in
+public affairs are comparatively few, yet such glimpses as he has given
+prove him, beyond all doubt, to have been a democrat in principle, to have
+arrived, in fact, at the beginning of his career at a point beyond that
+attained by England's rulers at the end of the century. This far-sighted
+vision of his may have been another reason to be added to those mentioned
+at the beginning of the chapter why his interest in the practical affairs
+of his country did not more often express itself. The wrangling, the
+inconsequentialness, the eloquence expended upon mere personal interests
+which make up by far the larger proportion of all political agitation, are
+irritating to the last degree to a man of vision. His part was that of the
+philosopher and artist--to watch and to record in the portrayal of his
+many characters the underlying principle of freedom, which was the guiding
+star in all his work.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+SOCIAL IDEALS
+
+
+Browning's social ideals revolve about a trinity of values: the value of
+love, the value of truth, the value of evil. His ethics are the natural
+outgrowth of his mysticism and his idealism, with no touch of the
+utilitarianism which has been a distinctive mark of the fabric of English
+society during the nineteenth century, nor, on the other hand, of the
+hidebound conventionalism which has limited personal freedom in ways
+detrimental to just those aspects of social morality it was most anxious
+to preserve.
+
+The fact of which Browning seemed more conscious than of any other fact of
+his existence, and which, as we have seen, was the very core of his
+mysticism, was feeling. Things about which an ordinary man would feel no
+emotion at all start in his mind a train of thoughts, ending only in the
+perception of divine love. The eating of a palatable fig fills his heart
+with such gratefulness to the giver of the fig that immediately he fares
+forth upon the way which brings him into the presence of the Prime Giver
+from whom all gifts are received. What ecstasy of feeling in the artist
+aspiring through his art to the higher regions of Absolute Beauty in "Abt
+Vogler" of the poet who loves, aspiring to the divine through his human
+love in the epilogue to "Ferishtah's Fancies!" The perception of feeling
+was so intense that it became in him exalted and concentrated, incapable
+of dissipating itself in ephemeral sentimentalities, and this it is which
+gives feeling to Browning its mystical quality, and puts personal love
+upon the plane of a veritable revelation.
+
+Though reports have often floated about in regard to his attachments to
+other women after Mrs. Browning's death, the fact remains that he did not
+marry again, that he wrote the lyrics in "Ferishtah's Fancies," and the
+sonnet to Edward Fitzgerald just before his death, and thirty years after
+his wife's death. Moreover, in the epilogue to "The Two Poets of Croisic"
+he gives a hint of what might be his attitude toward any other women who
+may have come into his life, in the application of the tale of the cricket
+chirping "love" in the place of the broken string of a poet's lyre--
+
+  "For as victory was nighest,
+    While I sang and played,
+  With my lyre at lowest, highest,
+    Right alike--one string that made
+    Love sound soft was snapt in twain,
+    Never to be heard again,----
+
+  "Had not a kind cricket fluttered,
+    Perched upon the place
+  Vacant left, and duly uttered,
+    'Love, Love, Love,' when'er the bass
+    Asked the treble to atone
+    For its somewhat sombre drone."
+
+These rare qualities of constancy, exaltation and aspiration, in love
+sublimating it into a spiritual emotion, which was evidently the
+distinctive mark of Browning's personality on the emotional side,
+furnishes the keynote by which his presentation or solution of the social
+problems involved in the relations of men and women is always to be
+gauged.
+
+He had been writing ten years when he essayed his first serious
+presentation of what we might to-day call a problem play on an English
+subject in "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon." In all of his long poems and in
+many of his short ones personal love had been portrayed under various
+conditions--between friends or lovers, husband and wife, or father and
+son, and in every instance it is a dominating influence in the action, as
+we have already seen it to be in "Strafford." Again, in "King Victor and
+King Charles" the action centers upon Charles's love for his father, and
+is also moulded in many ways by Polyxena's love for her husband, Charles.
+
+But a perception of the possible heights to be obtained by the passion of
+romantic love only fully emerges in "Pippa Passes," for example in
+Ottima's vision of the reality of her own love, despite her great sin as
+contrasted with that of Sebald's, and in Jules's rising above the
+conventionally low when he discovers he has been duped, and perceiving in
+Phene a purity of soul which no earthly conditions had been able to sully,
+
+  "Who, what is Lutwyche, what Natalia's friends,
+  What the whole world except our love--my own,
+  Own Phene?...
+  I do but break these paltry models up
+  To begin art afresh ...
+  Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!
+  Like a god going through the world there stands
+  One mountain for a moment in the dusk,
+  Whole brotherhoods of cedars on its brow:
+  And you are ever by me while I gaze
+  --Are in my arms as now--as now--as now!
+  Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!
+  Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas!"
+
+Again, in "The Return of the Druses" there is a complicated clash between
+the ideal of religious reverence for the incarnation of divinity in Djabal
+and human love for him in the soul of Anael, resulting at the end in the
+destruction of the idea of Djabal's supernatural divinity, and his
+reinstatement perceived by Anael as divine through the complete exaltation
+of his human love for Anael.
+
+These examples, however, while they illustrate Browning's attitude toward
+human love, are far enough removed from nineteenth-century conditions in
+England. In "Pippa," the social conditions of nineteenth-century Italy are
+reflected; in "The Druses," the religious conditions of the Druse nation
+in the fifteenth century.
+
+In the "Blot in the 'Scutcheon" a situation is developed which comes home
+forcibly to the nineteenth-century Englishman despite the fact that the
+scene is supposed to be laid in the eighteenth century. The poet's
+treatment of the clash between the ideal, cherished by an old and honored
+aristocratic family of its own immaculate purity, and the spontaneous,
+complete and exalted love of the two young people who in their ecstasy
+transcend conventions, illustrates, as perhaps no other situation could,
+his reverential attitude upon the subject of love. Gwendolen, the older,
+intuitional woman, and Mertoun, the young lover, are the only people in
+the play to realize that purity may exist although the social enactments
+upon which it is supposed to depend have not been complied with. Tresham
+learns it only when he has wounded Mertoun unto death; Mildred never
+learns it. The grip of conventional teaching has sunk so deeply into her
+nature that she feels her sin unpardonable and only to be atoned for by
+death. Mertoun, as he dies, gives expression to the essential purity and
+truth of his nature in these words:
+
+                                      "Die along with me,
+  Dear Mildred! 'tis so easy, and you'll 'scape
+  So much unkindness! Can I lie at rest,
+  With rude speech spoken to you, ruder deeds
+  Done to you?--heartless men shall have my heart
+  And I tied down with grave-clothes and the worm,
+  Aware, perhaps, of every blow--O God!--
+  Upon those lips--yet of no power to bear
+  The felon stripe by stripe! Die Mildred! Leave
+  Their honorable world to them! For God
+  We're good enough, though the world casts us out."
+
+This is only one of many instances which go to show that Browning's
+conception of love might include, on the one hand, a complete freedom
+from the trammels imposed upon it by conventional codes of morality, but
+on the other, was so real and permanent a sympathy between two souls, and
+so absolute a revelation of divine beauty, that its morality far
+transcended that of the conventional codes, which under the guise of
+lawful alliances permit and even encourage marriages based upon the most
+external of attractions, or those entered into for merely social or
+commercial reasons. A sin against love seems in Browning's eyes to come
+the nearest of all human failings to the unpardonable sin.
+
+It must not be supposed from what has been said that he had any
+anarchistic desire to do away with the solemnization of marriage, but his
+eyes were wide open to the fact that there might be sin within the
+marriage bond, and just as surely that there might be love pure and true
+outside of it.
+
+Another illustration of Browning's belief in the existence of a love such
+as Shakespeare describes, which looks on tempests and is never shaken, is
+given in the "Inn Album." Here, again, the characters are all English, and
+the story is based upon an actual occurrence. Such changes as Browning
+has made in the story are with the intention of pitting against the
+villainy of an aristocratic seducer of the lowest type a bourgeois young
+man, who has been in love with the betrayed woman, and who when he finds
+out that it was this man, his friend, who had stood between them, does not
+swerve from his loyalty and truth to her, and in the end avenges her by
+killing the aristocratic villain. The young man is betrothed to a girl he
+cares nothing for, the woman has married a man she cares nothing for. All
+is of no moment in the presence of a genuine loyal emotion which shows
+itself capable of a life of devotion with no thought of reward.
+
+Browning has nowhere translated into more noble action the love of a man
+than in the passage where the hero of the story gives himself unselfishly
+to the woman who has been so deeply wronged:
+
+                            "Take heart of hers,
+  And give her hand of mine with no more heart
+  Than now, you see upon this brow I strike!
+  What atom of a heart do I retain
+  Not all yours? Dear, you know it! Easily
+  May she accord me pardon when I place
+  My brow beneath her foot, if foot so deign,
+  Since uttermost indignity is spared--
+  Mere marriage and no love! And all this time
+  Not one word to the purpose! Are you free?
+  Only wait! only let me serve--deserve
+  Where you appoint and how you see the good!
+  I have the will--perhaps the power--at least
+  Means that have power against the world. Fortune--
+  Take my whole life for your experiment!
+  If you are bound--in marriage, say--why, still,
+  Still, sure, there's something for a friend to do,
+  Outside? A mere well-wisher, understand!
+  I'll sit, my life long, at your gate, you know,
+  Swing it wide open to let you and him
+  Pass freely,--and you need not look, much less
+  Fling me a '_Thank you!--are you there, old friend?_'
+  Don't say that even: I should drop like shot!
+  So I feel now, at least: some day, who knows?
+  After no end of weeks and months and years
+  You might smile! '_I believe you did your best!_'
+  And that shall make my heart leap--leap such leap
+  As lands the feet in Heaven to wait you there!
+  Ah, there's just one thing more! How pale you look!
+  Why? Are you angry? If there's after all,
+  Worst come to worst--if still there somehow be
+  The shame--I said was no shame,--none, I swear!--
+  In that case, if my hand and what it holds,--
+  My name,--might be your safeguard now,--at once--
+  Why, here's the hand--you have the heart."
+
+The genuine lovers in Browning's gallery will occur to every reader of
+Browning: lovers who are not deterred by obstacles, like Norbert, lovers
+like Miranda, devoted to a woman with a "past"; like the lover in "One Way
+of Love," who still can say, "Those who win heaven, blest are they."
+Sometimes there is a problem to be solved, sometimes not. Whenever there
+is a problem, however, it is solved by Browning on the side of sincerity
+and truth, never on the side of convention.
+
+Take, for example, "The Statue and the Bust," which many have considered
+to uphold an immoral standard and of which its defenders declare that the
+moral point of the story lies not in the fact that the lady and the Duke
+wished to elope with each other but that they never had strength enough of
+mind to do so. Considering what an entirely conventional and loveless
+marriage this of the lady and the Duke evidently was we cannot suppose, in
+the light of Browning's solution of similar situations, that he would have
+thought it any great crime if the Duke and the lady had eloped, since
+there was so genuine an attraction between them. But he does word his
+climax, it must be confessed, in a way to leave a loophole of doubt on the
+subject for those who do not like to be scandalized by their Browning:
+"Let a man contend to the uttermost for his life's set prize, be it what
+it will!"
+
+There is a saving grace to be extracted from the last line.
+
+  "--The sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
+  Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
+  Though the end in sight was a vice, I say."
+
+In "The Ring and the Book," the problem is similar to that in the "Inn
+Album," except that the villain in the case is the lawful husband. The
+lover, Caponsacchi, under different conditions demanding that he shall not
+give the slightest expression to his love, rises to a reverential height
+which even some of Browning's readers seem to doubt as possible.
+Caponsacchi is, however, too much under the spell of Catholic theology to
+see the mystical meaning of the love which he acknowledges in his own soul
+for Pompilia. In this poem it is Pompilia who is given the divine vision.
+If I may resay what I have said in another connection,[3] there is no
+moral struggle in Pompilia's short life such as that in Caponsacchi's.
+Both were alike in the fact that up to a certain point in their lives
+their full consciousness was unawakened: hers slept, through innocence and
+ignorance; his, in spite of knowledge, through lack of aspiration. She was
+rudely awakened by suffering; he by the sudden revelation of a possible
+ideal. Therefore, while for him, conscious of his past failures, a
+struggle begins: for her, conscious of no failure in her duty, which she
+had always followed according to her light, there simply continues duty
+according to the new light. Neither archbishop nor friendly "smiles and
+shakes of head" could weaken her conviction that, being estranged in soul
+from her husband, her attitude toward him was inevitable. No qualms of
+conscience troubled her as to her inalienable right to fly from him. That
+she submitted as long as she did was only because no one could be found to
+aid her. And how quick and certain her defence of Caponsacchi, threatened
+by Guido, when he overtakes them at the Inn! As she thinks over it calmly
+afterward, she makes no apology, but justifies her action as the voice of
+God.
+
+  "If I sinned so--never obey voice more.
+  O, the Just and Terrible, who bids us 'Bear.'
+  Not--'Stand by; bear to see my angels bear!'"
+
+The gossip over her flight with Caponsacchi does not trouble her as it
+does him. He saved her in her great need; the supposition that their
+motives for flight had any taint of impurity in them is too puerile to be
+given a thought, yet with the same sublime certainty of the right,
+characteristic of her, she acknowledges, at the end, her love for
+Caponsacchi, and looks for its fulfilment in the future when marriage
+shall be an interpenetration of souls that know themselves into one.
+Having attained so great a good she can wish none of the evil she has
+suffered undone. She goes a step farther. Not only does she accept her own
+suffering for the sake of the final supreme good to herself, but she feels
+assured that good will fall at last to those who worked the evil.
+
+In her absolute certainty of her realization of an unexpressed love in a
+future existence, she is only equaled in Browning's poetry by the speaker
+in "Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead."
+
+That Browning's belief in the mystical quality of personal love never
+changed is shown by the fact that near the end of his life, in the
+"Parleying" with Daniel Bartoli, he treats a love romance based upon fact
+in a way to emphasize this same truth which so constantly appears in his
+earlier work. The lady in this case, who is of the people, having been
+offered a bribe by the King which will mean the dishonoring of herself and
+her husband, and which if she does not accept will mean her complete
+separation from her husband, instantly decides against the bribe. She
+prefers love in spirit in a convent to the accepting of the King's
+promise that she will be made much of in court if she will sign a paper
+agreeing that her husband shall at once cede his dukedoms to the King. She
+explains her attitude to the Duke, who hesitates in his decision,
+whereupon she leaves and saves his honor for him, but his inability to
+decide at once upon the higher ground of spiritual love reveals to her the
+inadequacy of his love as compared with her own and kills her love for
+him. She later, however, marries a man who was only a boy of ten at the
+time of this episode, and their life together was a dream of happiness.
+But she dies and the devoted husband becomes a man of the world again. The
+Duke, however, has a streak of genuineness in his nature after all.
+Although carried away by the charms of a bold, black-eyed, tall creature,
+a development in keeping with the nature of the Duke in the true story,
+Browning is equal to the occasion, and makes him declare that the real man
+in him is dead and is still faithful to the old love. All she has is his
+ghost. Some day his soul will again be called into life by his ideal love.
+
+The poet frequently expresses a doubt of man's power to be faithful to the
+letter in case of a wife's death. "Any wife to any husband" reveals that
+feeling as it comes to a woman. The poet's answer to this doubt is
+invariably, that where the love was true other attraction is a makeshift
+by which a desolate life is made tolerable, or, as in "Fifine at the
+Fair," an ephemeral indulgence in pleasure which does not touch the
+reality of the spiritual love.
+
+Browning was well aware that the ordinary woman had a stronger sense of
+the eternal in love than the ordinary man. In relation to the Duke in the
+poem previously mentioned he remarks:
+
+  "One leans to like the duke, too; up we'll patch
+  Some sort of saintship for him--not to match
+  Hers--but man's best and woman's worst amount
+  So nearly to the same thing, that we count
+  In man a miracle of faithfulness
+  If, while unfaithful somewhat, he lay stress
+  On the main fact that love, when love indeed,
+  Is wholly solely love from first to last--
+  Truth--all the rest a lie."
+
+It may be said that all this is the romantic love about which the poets
+have always sung, and has as much existence in real life as the ideal of
+disinterested helpfulness to lovelorn damsels sung about in the days of
+chivalry. True, others have sung of the exaltation and the immortality of
+love, and few have been those who have found it, but nowhere has the
+distinctively human side been touched with such reverence as in Browning.
+It is not Beatrice translated into a divine personage to be adored by a
+worshipping devotee, but a wholly human woman who loves and is loved, who
+touches divinity in Browning's mind. Human love is then not an impossible
+ideal of which he writes in poetic language existing only in the realm of
+fancy; it is a living religion, bringing those who love nearer to God
+through the exaltation of their feeling than any other revelation of the
+human soul. Other states of consciousness reveal to humanity the existence
+of the absolute, but this gives a premonition of what divine love may have
+in store for the aspiring soul.
+
+In holding to such an ideal of love as this Browning has ranged himself
+entirely apart from the main tendencies of thought of the century, on the
+relations of men and women, which have, on the one hand, been wholly
+conventional, marriage being a contract under the law binding for life
+except in cases of definite breaches of conduct, and under the Church of
+affection which is binding only for life; and have, on the other hand,
+gone extreme lengths in the advocacy of entire freedom in the relations
+of the sexes. The first degrades love by making it too much a matter of
+law, the second by making it an ephemeral passion from which almost
+everything truly beautiful in the relationship of two human beings is, of
+necessity, eliminated.
+
+To either of these extreme factions Browning's attitude is equally
+incomprehensible. The first cries out against his liberalness, the second,
+declaring that human emotion should be untrammeled by either Church, law
+or God, would find him a pernicious influence against freedom; there are,
+however, many shades of opinion between the two extremes which would feel
+sympathy with his ideals in one or more directions.
+
+The chief difficulty in the acceptance of the ideal for most people is
+that they have not yet developed to the plane where feeling comes to them
+with the intensity, the concentration, the depth or the constancy that
+brings with it the sense of revelation. For many people law or the Church
+is absolutely necessary to preserve such feeling as they are capable of
+from dissipating itself in shallow sentimentalism; while one or the other
+will always be necessary in some form because love has its social as well
+as its personal aspect.
+
+Yet the law and the Church should both allow sufficient freedom for the
+breaking of relations from which all sincerity has departed, even though
+humanity as a whole has not yet and probably will not for many ages arrive
+at Browning's conception of human love.
+
+Truth to one's own highest vision in love being a cardinal principle with
+Browning, it follows that truth to one's nature in any direction is
+desirable. He even carries this doctrine of truth to the individual nature
+so far as to base upon it an apology for the most unmitigated villain he
+has portrayed, Guido, and to put this apology into the mouth of the person
+he had most deeply wronged, Pompilia. With exquisite vision she, even, can
+say:
+
+  "But where will God be absent! In his face
+  Is light, but in his shadow healing too:
+  Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed!
+  And as my presence was unfortunate,--
+  My earthly good, temptation and a snare,--
+  Nothing about me but drew somehow down
+  His hate upon me,--somewhat so excused
+  Therefore, since hate was thus the truth of him,--
+  May my evanishment for evermore
+  Help further to relieve the heart that cast
+  Such object of its natural loathing forth!
+  So he was made; he nowise made himself:
+  I could not love him, but his mother did."
+
+It is this notion that every nature must express its own truth which
+underlies a poem like "Fifine at the Fair." Through expressing the truth
+of itself, and so grasping at half truths, even at the false, it finally
+reaches a higher truth. A nature like Guido's was not born with a faculty
+for development. He simply had to live out his own hate. The man in
+"Fifine" had the power of perceiving an ideal, but not the power of living
+up to it without experimentation upon lower planes of living, probably the
+most common type of man to-day. There are others like Norbert or Mertoun,
+in whom the ideal truth is the real truth of their natures and for whom
+life means the constant expansion of this ideal truth within them. In many
+of the varying types of men and women portrayed by Browning there is the
+recognition of the possibility of psychic development either by means of
+experience or by sudden intuitions, and if, as in the case of Guido, there
+is no development in this life, there is hope in a future existence in a
+universe ruled by a God of love.
+
+In his views upon human character and its possibilities of development
+Browning is, of course, in touch with the scientific views on the subject
+which filled the air in all later nineteenth-century thought, changing the
+orthodox ideal of a static humanity born in sin and only to be saved by
+belief in certain dogmas to that of a humanity born to develop; changing
+the notion that sin was a terrible and absolutely defined entity, against
+which every soul had ceaselessly to war, into the notion that sin is a
+relative evil, consequent upon lack of development, which, as the human
+soul advances on its path, led by its inborn consciousness of the divine
+to be attained, will gradually disappear.
+
+But the evil which results from this lack of development in individuals to
+other individuals, and to society at large, brings a problem which as we
+have already seen in the first chapter is not so easy of solution. Yet
+Browning solves it, for is it not through the combat with this evil that
+the soul is given its real opportunity for development? Pain and suffering
+give rise to the thirst for happiness and joy, and through the arousing of
+sympathy and pity, the desire that others shall have happiness and joy,
+therefore to be despairing and pessimistic about evil or to wish for its
+immediate annihilation would really be suicidal to the best interests of
+the human race; nay, he even goes farther than this, as is hinted in one
+of his last poems, "Rephan," and imagines that any other state than one
+of flux between good and evil would be monotonous:
+
+  "Startle me up, by an Infinite
+  Discovered above and below me--height
+  And depth alike to attract my flight,
+
+  "Repel my descent: by hate taught love.
+  Oh, gain were indeed to see above
+  Supremacy ever--to move, remove,
+
+  "Not reach--aspire yet never attain
+  To the object aimed at! Scarce in vain,--
+  As each stage I left nor touched again.
+
+  "To suffer, did pangs bring the loved one bliss,
+  Wring knowledge from ignorance:--just for this--
+  To add one drop to a love--abyss!
+
+  "Enough: for you doubt, you hope, O men,
+  You fear, you agonize, die: what then?
+  Is an end to your life's work out of ken?
+
+  "Have you no assurance that, earth at end,
+  Wrong will prove right? Who made shall mend
+  In the higher sphere to which yearnings tend?"
+
+In his attitude toward the existence of evil Browning takes issue with
+Carlyle, as already noted in the second chapter. Carlyle, as Browning
+represents him, cannot reconcile the existence of evil with beneficent and
+omniscient power. He makes the opponent, who is an echo of Carlyle in the
+argument in "Bernard de Mandeville," exclaim:
+
+                                        "Where's
+  Knowledge, where power and will in evidence
+  'Tis Man's-play merely! Craft foils rectitude,
+  Malignity defeats beneficence,
+  And grant, at very last of all, the feud
+  'Twixt good and evil ends, strange thoughts intrude
+  Though good be garnered safely and good's foe
+  Bundled for burning. Thoughts steal even so--
+  Why grant tares leave to thus o'ertop, o'ertower
+  Their field-mate, boast the stalk and flaunt the flower,
+  Triumph one sunny minute?"
+
+No attempt must be made to show God's reason for allowing evil. Any such
+attempt will fail. This passage comes as near as any in Browning to a
+plunge into the larger social questions which during the nineteenth
+century have come more and more to the front, and is an index of just
+where the poet stood in relation to the social movements of the century's
+end. His gaze was so centered upon the individual and the power of the
+individual to work out his own salvation and the need of evil in the
+process that his philosophical attitude toward evil quite overtops the
+militant interest in overcoming it.
+
+Carlyle, on the other hand, saw the immense evil of the social conditions
+in England, and raged and stormed against them, but could see no light by
+which evil could be turned into good. He little realized that his own
+storming at the ineptitude, the imbecility, the fool-ness of society, and
+his own despair over the, to him, unaccountable evils of existence, were
+in themselves a positive good growing out of the evil. Though he was not
+to suggest practical means for leading the masses out of bondage, he was
+to call attention in trumpet tones to the fact that the bondage existed.
+By so doing he was taking a first step or rather drawing aside the curtain
+and revealing the dire necessity that steps should be taken and taken
+soon. While Carlyle was militantly shouting against evil to some purpose
+which would later mean militant action against it, Browning was settling
+in his own mind just what relation evil should hold to good in the scheme
+of the universe, and writing a poem to tell why he was a liberal. In fine,
+Carlyle was opening the way toward the socialism of the latter part of the
+century, while Browning was still found in the camp of what the socialist
+of to-day calls the middle-class individualist.
+
+Liberalism, which had taken on social conditions to the point through
+legislation where every man was free to be a property holder if he could
+manage to become one, and to amass wealth, left out of consideration the
+fact that he never could be free as long as he had to compete with
+every other man in the state to get these things. Hence the movement of
+the working classes to gain freedom by substituting for a competitive form
+of society a cooperative form. Great names in literature and art have
+helped toward the on-coming of this movement. Carlyle had railed at the
+millions of the English nation, "mostly fools;" Ruskin had bemoaned the
+enthronement of ugliness as the result of the industrial conditions;
+Matthew Arnold had proposed a panacea for the ills of the social condition
+in the bringing about of social equality through culture, and, best of
+all, William Morris had not only talked but acted.
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM MORRIS]
+
+To any student of social movements to-day, whether he has been drawn into
+the swirl of socialistic propaganda or whether he is still comfortably
+sitting in his parlor feeling an intellectual sympathy but no emotional
+call to leave his parlor and be up and doing, Morris appears as the most
+interesting figure of the century. The pioneers in the nineteenth-century
+movement toward socialism in England, unless we except the social
+enthusiasm of a Shelley or a Blake, were Owen and Maurice. Owen was that
+remarkable anomaly, a self-made man who had gained his wealth because of
+the new industrial order inaugurated by the invention of machinery, who
+yet could look at the circumstances so fortuitous for him in an impersonal
+manner, and realize that what had put a silver spoon into his own mouth
+was taking away even pewter spoons from other men's mouths. Although he
+was really in love with the new order of machine production, he realized
+what many to-day fail to see, that machine production organized for the
+benefit of private persons would most assuredly mean the poverty and the
+degradation of the workers. He did not stop here, however, but spent his
+vast fortune in trying to make the conditions of the workingmen better. In
+the estimation of socialists to-day his work was of a very high order,
+"not mere utopianism." It bore no similarity to the romantic dreams of
+poets who saw visions of a perfect society regardless of the fact that a
+perfect society cannot suddenly blossom from conditions of appalling
+misery and degradation. Owen was a practical business man. He knew all the
+ins and outs of the industrial regime, and consequently he had a practical
+program, not a dream, which he wished to see carried out. Accounts of the
+conditions of the workers at that time are heartrending. Everywhere the
+same tale of abject poverty, ignorance, and oppression in field and
+factory, long hours of labor and dear food. To bring help to these
+downtrodden people was the burning desire of Robert Owen and his
+followers. His efforts were not rewarded by that success which they
+deserved, his failure being a necessary concomitant of the fact that even
+a practical program for betterment cannot suddenly take effect owing to
+the inevitable inertia of any long-established conditions. In showing the
+causes which kept him from the full accomplishment of his ideals, in spite
+of his genuine practicalness, Brougham Villiers, the recent historian of
+the socialist movement in England, says he attempted too much "to
+influence the workers from without, trying, of course vainly, to induce
+the governing classes to interest themselves in the work of social reform.
+Yet it is difficult to see what else he could have done at the time. We
+have already shown how utterly disorganized the working classes were, how
+incapable, indeed, of any organization. They were also destitute of
+political power, and miserably underpaid. What could they do to help
+themselves? Help, if it was to come at all, must come from the only people
+who then had the power, if they only had the will, to accord it, and to
+them, at first, Robert Owen appealed. Later, he turned to the people,
+and for them indeed his work was not utterly wasted, though generations
+were to pass before the full effect of it could be seen."
+
+However abortive his attempts to gain political sympathy for his socialist
+program, and in spite of the fact that socialist agitation came to a
+standstill in England with the defeat of the somewhat chaotic socialism of
+the Chartists, it cannot be doubted that his efforts influenced the
+political reformers who were to take up one injustice after another and
+fight for its melioration until the working classes were at least brought
+to a plane where they could begin to organize and develop toward the still
+higher plane where they could themselves take their own salvation in hand.
+
+Another man who did much to bring the workingman's cause into prominence
+was Maurice, who emphasized the Christian aspect of the movement. He was
+an excellent supplement to Owen, whose liberal views on religion militated
+in some quarters against an acceptance of his humane views in regard to
+workingmen.
+
+Notwithstanding the personal strength of these two men they failed not
+only in the practical attainment of their object, but their ideas on
+socialism did not even wedge itself into the thought consciousness of the
+Englishmen.
+
+The men who did more than any one else to awaken the sleeping English
+consciousness were Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold and Morris. Of these Morris
+held a position midway between the old-fashioned dreamer of dreams and the
+new-fashioned hustling political socialist, who now sends his
+representatives to Parliament and has his "say" in the national affairs of
+the country.
+
+Being a poet, he could, of course, dream dreams, and one of these, "The
+Dream of John Ball," puts the case of the toilers in a form at once so
+convincing and so full of divine pity that it does not seem possible it
+could be read even by the most hardened of trust magnates without making
+him see how unjust has been the distribution of this world's goods through
+the making of one man do the work of many: "In days to come one man shall
+do the work of a hundred men--yea, of a thousand or more: and this is the
+shift of mastership that shall make many masters and many rich men." This
+is a riddle which John Ball cannot grasp at once, and when it is explained
+to him he is still more mystified at the result.
+
+"Thou hast seen the weaver at his loom: think how it should be if he sit
+no longer before the web and cast the shuttle and draw home the sley, but
+if the shed open of itself, speed through it as swift as the eye can
+follow, and the sley come home of itself, and the weaver standing by ...
+looking to half a dozen looms and bidding them what to do. And as with the
+weaver so with the potter, and the smith, and every worker in metals, and
+all other crafts, that it shall be for them looking on and tending, as
+with the man that sitteth in the cart while the horse draws. Yea, at last
+so shall it be even with those who are mere husbandmen; and no longer
+shall the reaper fare afield in the morning with his hook over his
+shoulder, and smite and bind and smite again till the sun is down and the
+moon is up; but he shall draw a thing made by men into the field with one
+or two horses, and shall say the word and the horses shall go up and down,
+and the thing shall reap and gather and bind, and do the work of many men.
+Imagine all this in thy mind if thou canst, at least as ye may imagine a
+tale of enchantment told by a minstrel, and then tell me what shouldst
+thou deem that the life of men would be amidst all this, men such as these
+of the township here, or the men of the Canterbury guilds."
+
+And John Ball's conclusion is that things in that day to come will be not
+as they are but as they ought to be. With irresistible logic he declares:
+
+"I say that if men still abide men as I have known them, and unless these
+folk of England change as the land changeth--and forsooth of the men, for
+good and for evil, I can think no other than I think now, or behold them
+other than I have known them and loved them--I say if the men be still
+men, what will happen except that there should be all plenty in the land,
+and not one poor man therein ... for there would then be such abundance of
+good things, that, as greedy as the lords might be, there would be enough
+to satisfy their greed and yet leave good living for all who labored with
+their hands; so that these should labor for less than now, and they would
+have time to learn knowledge," and he goes on, "take part in the making of
+laws."
+
+But Morris was not the man to dream, merely. Though he did not trouble
+himself about the doctrinaire side of socialism, he preached it constantly
+from the human side and from the artistic side. While some socialist
+writers make us feel that socialism might possibly only be Gradgrind in
+another guise, he makes us feel that peace and plenty and loveliness
+would attend upon the sons and daughters of socialism. As one of his many
+admirers says of him: "He was an out-and-out Communist because of the
+essential sanity of a mind incapable of the desire to monopolize anything
+he could not use."
+
+The authoritarianism of the Marxian socialists was distasteful to him,
+for, to quote from the same admirer, his "conception of socialism was that
+of a free society, based on the simple rights of all to use the earth and
+anything in it, and the consequent abolition of all competition for the
+means of life." His attitude of mind on these points led him to break away
+from the Social Democratic Federation, which, with its political program,
+was distasteful to Morris's more purely social feeling, and found the
+Socialist League. This emphasized more particularly the artistic side of
+socialism. Morris and his followers were bent upon making life a beautiful
+thing as well as a comfortable thing.
+
+According to all accounts, the League was not as great a force in the
+development of socialist ideals as was Morris himself, who inspired such
+men as Burne-Jones and Walter Crane with a sympathy in the new ideals, as
+well as multitudes of lesser men in the crowds that gathered to listen to
+him in Waltham Green or in some other like open place of a Sunday.
+
+Morris's chief contribution to the growth of the cause was perhaps his own
+business plant, into which he put as many of his ideals for the betterment
+of the workingmen's conditions as he was able to do under existing
+conditions. Who has not gloated over his exquisite editions of Chaucer and
+the like--books in which even the punctuation marks are a delight to the
+eye, and the illustrations as far beyond ordinary illustrations as the
+punctuation marks are beyond ordinary periods. If anything could add to
+the richness of the interior it is the contrasting simplicity of the white
+vellum bindings, and, again, if there is another possible touch of
+grace--a gilding of the lily--what could better fulfil that purpose than
+the outer boxing covered with a Morris cotton print! The critical may
+object that these Morris editions are so expensive that none but
+millionaire bibliophiles can have many of them. How many of us have even
+seen them except in such collections! And how many of his workmen are able
+to share in this product of their labor to any greater extent than the
+product of labor is usually shared in by its producers, may be asked.
+
+Though we are obliged to answer that the workmen probably do not have the
+Morris books in their own libraries, they yet have the joy of making these
+beautiful books under conditions of happy workmanship--that is, they are
+skilled craftsmen, who have been trained in an apprenticeship, who are
+asked to work only eight hours a day, who receive higher wages than other
+workmen and, above all, who have the stimulation of the presence of
+Morris, himself, working among them.
+
+Morris's enthusiasm for a more universally happy and beautiful society
+combined with the object lesson of his own methods in conducting a
+business upon genuinely artistic principles has done an incalculable
+amount in spreading the gospel of socialism. Still there was too much of
+the _laissez faire_ atmosphere about his attitude for it to bring about
+any marked degree of progress.
+
+The opinion of Mr. William Clarke who had many conversations with Morris
+on the subject reveals that, after all, there was too much of the poet
+about him for him to be a really practical force in the movement. He
+writes:
+
+"It is not easy to understand how Morris proposes to bring about the
+condition of things he looks forward to. No parliamentary or municipal
+methods, no reliance upon lawmaking machinery, an abhorrence of everything
+that smacks of 'politics': it all seems very impracticable to the average
+man, and certainly suggests the poet rather than the man of affairs. What
+Morris thinks will really happen is, I should say, judging from numerous
+conversations I have had with him, something like this: Existing society
+is, he thinks, gradually, but with increasing momentum, disintegrating
+through its own rottenness. The capitalist system of production is
+breaking down fast and is compelled to exploit new regions in Africa and
+other parts, where he thinks its term will be short. Economically,
+socially, morally, politically, religiously, civilization is becoming
+bankrupt. Meanwhile it is for the socialist to take advantage of this
+disintegration by spreading discontent, by preaching economic truths, and
+by any kind of demonstration which may harass the authorities and develop
+among the people an _esprit de corps_. By these means the people will, in
+some way or other, be ready to take up the industry of the world when the
+capitalist class is no longer able to direct or control it. Morris
+believes less in a violent revolution than he did and thinks that
+workmen's associations and labor unions form a kind of means between
+brute force on the one hand and a parliamentary policy on the other. He
+does not, however, share the sanguine views of John Burns as to the
+wonders to be accomplished by the 'new' trades unionism."
+
+The practical ineffectiveness of the Morris socialism in spite of its
+having taken some steps in the direction of vital activity was overcome by
+the next socialist body which came into prominence--the Fabian Society, in
+which Bernard Shaw has been so conspicuous a figure.
+
+As already mentioned, the Fabians are not a fighting body, but a solidly
+educational body. To them is due the bringing of socialism into the realm
+of political economy, and in so doing they have striven to harmonize it
+with English practical political methods. Besides this, they have done a
+vast amount of work in educating public opinion, not with the view to
+immediately converting the English nation to a belief in the changing of
+the present order into one wholly socialistic, but with a view to
+introducing socialistic treatment of the individual problems which arise
+in contemporary politics.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN BURNS]
+
+Their campaign of education was conducted so well that its effects were
+soon visible, not only in the modification of public opinion, but upon
+the workingmen themselves. The method was simple enough: "If any public,
+especially any social, question came to the front, the Fabian method was
+to make a careful independent study of the matter, and present to the
+public, in a penny pamphlet, a thoughtful statement of the case and some
+common sense, and incidentally socialistic, suggestions for a solution."
+Fabian ideas were thus introduced into the consciousness of the awakening
+trades unionists.
+
+It has been objected that the gain was much more for the trades unionists
+than for the Fabians. Their one-time eager pupils have, it is said,
+progressed beyond their masters, as a review of recent socialistic
+tendencies would divulge had we the time to follow them in this place.
+However that may be, the great fact remains that the Fabians have done
+more than any other branch of socialists to bridge over the distance
+between what the English writers call the middle-class idealist and the
+proletarian, with the result that the proletarian has begun to think for
+himself and to translate middle-class idealism into proletarian realism.
+
+Socialism, from being the watch word of the enthusiastic revolutionary,
+began to be discussed in every intelligent household and in every
+debating society. This enormous growth in public sentiment occurred during
+the session of the Unionist Parliament, 1886-92. When this Parliament
+opened there was hardly any socialist literature, and when it closed
+everybody was reading Bellamy and the "Fabian Essays," and Sir William
+Harcourt had made his memorable remark: "We are all socialists now."
+
+The gesticulating and bemoaning idealists, the Carlyles and the Ruskins,
+the revolutionary but _laissez faire_ prophets like Morris, who believed
+in a complete change but not in using any of the means at hand to bring
+about that change, had given place to men like Keir Hardie and John Burns,
+who had sprung into leadership from the ranks of the workingmen
+themselves, and who were to be later their representatives in Parliament
+when the Independent Labor Party came into existence. All this had been
+done by that group of progressive men, long-headed enough to see that the
+ideal of a better and more beautiful social life could not be gained
+except by a long and toilsome process of education and of action which
+would consciously follow the principles of growth discovered by scientists
+to obtain in all unconscious cosmic and physical development, the very
+principle which as we have seen, Browning declared should have guided his
+hero Sordello long before the Fabian socialists came into
+existence--namely, the principle of evolution. That their methods should
+have peacefully brought about the conditions where it was possible to form
+an Independent Labor Party, which would have the power to speak and act
+for itself instead of working as the Fabians themselves do through the
+parties already in power, shouts aloud for the wisdom of their policy. And
+is there not still plenty of work for them to do in the still further
+educating of all parties toward the flowering of genuine democracy, when
+the dreams of the dreamer shall have become actualities, because true and
+not spurious ways of making them actual shall have been worked out by
+experience?
+
+This remarkable growth in social ideals was taking place during the ninth
+decade of the century and the last decade of Browning's life. Is there any
+indication in his later work that he was conscious of it? There is
+certainly no direct evidence in his work that he progressed any farther in
+the development of democratic ideals than we find in the liberalism of
+such a parliamentary leader as Mr. Gladstone, while in that poem in which
+he considers more especially than in any other the subject of better
+conditions for the people, "Sordello," he distinctly expresses a mood of
+doubt as to the advisability of making conditions too easy for the human
+being, who needs the hardships and ills of life to bring his soul to
+perfection, a far more important thing in Browning's eyes than to live
+comfortably and beautifully. All he wishes for the human being is the fine
+chance to make the most of himself spiritually. The socialist would say
+that he could not secure the chance to do this except in a society where
+the murderous principle of competition should give way to that of
+cooperation. With this Browning might agree. Indeed, may this not have
+been the very principle Sordello had in mind as something revealed to him
+which neither Guelf nor Ghibelline could see, or was this only the more
+obvious principle of republican as opposed to monarchical principle and
+still falling under an individualistic conception of society?
+
+While his work is instinct with sympathy for all classes and conditions of
+men, Browning does not feel the ills of life with the intensity of a
+Carlyle, nor its ugliness with the grief of a Ruskin, nor yet its lack of
+culture with the priggishness of an Arnold, nor would he stand in open
+spaces and preach discontent to the masses like Morris. Why? Because he
+from the first was made wise to see a good in evil, a hope in ill-success,
+to be proud of men's fallacies, their half reasons, their faint aspirings,
+upward tending all though weak, the lesson learned after weary experiences
+of life by Paracelsus. His thought was centered upon the worth of every
+human being to himself and for God. Earth is after all only a place to
+grow in and prepare one's self for lives to come, and failure here, so
+long as the fight has been bravely fought, is to be regarded with anything
+but regret, for it is through the failure that the vision of the future is
+made more sure.
+
+What he finds true, as we saw, in the religious or philosophical world, he
+finds true in the moral world. Lack in human knowledge points the way to
+God; lack in human success points the way to immortality.
+
+The meaning of this life in relation to a future life being so much more
+important than this life in itself, and man's individual development being
+so much more important than his social development, Browning naturally
+would not turn his attention upon those practical, social or governmental
+means by which even the chance for individual development must be
+secured. He is too much occupied with the larger questions. He is not even
+a middle-class idealist, dreaming dreams of future earthly bliss; he is
+the prophet of future existences.
+
+Does his practical influence upon the social development of the century
+amount to nothing then? Not at all. He started out on his voyage through
+the century toward the democratic ideal in the good ship
+Individualism--the banner ship indeed. What he has emphasized upon this
+voyage is first the paramount worth of each and every human being, whether
+good or bad. Second, the possibility in every human being of conceiving an
+ideal, toward which by the exertion of his will power he should aspire,
+battling steadfastly against every obstruction that life throws in his
+course. Third, that even those who are incapable of formulating an ideal
+must be regarded as living out the truth of their natures and must
+therefore be treated with compassion. Fourth, that the highest function of
+the human soul is love, which expresses itself in many ways, but attains
+its full flowering only in the love of man and woman on a plane of
+spiritual exaltation, and that through this power of human love some
+glimpse of the divine is caught; therefore to this function of the soul
+it is of the utmost importance that human beings should be loyal and true,
+even if that loyalty and truth conflict with conventional ways of looking
+at life. Sailing in this good ship he also expresses his sympathy
+indirectly in his dramas and directly upon several occasions with the
+ideals of political freedom which during the century have been making
+progress toward democracy in the English Parliament through the
+legislation of the liberals, whose laws have brought a greater and greater
+measure of freedom to the middle classes and some measure of freedom to
+the working classes.
+
+But it seems as if when nearing the end of the century Browning landed
+from his ship upon some high island and straining his eyes toward the
+horizon of the dawn of another life did not fully realize that there was
+another good ship, Socialism, struggling to reach the ideal of democracy,
+and now become the banner ship whose work is to sail out into the unknown,
+turbulent seas of the future, finding the path to another high island in
+order that the way may be made clear for the ship Individualism to
+continue her course to another stage in the voyage toward a perfect
+democracy. And as the new ship, Socialism, passes on its way it will do
+well to heed the vision of the poet seer, straining his eyes toward the
+dawn of other lives in other spheres, lest in the struggle and strain to
+bring about a more comfortable and beautiful life upon earth, the
+important truth be slighted that humanity has a higher destiny to fulfil
+than can be realized in the most Utopian dreams of an earthly democracy.
+This truth is in fact not only forgotten but is absolutely denied by many
+of the latter-day social reformers.
+
+To sum up, I think one is justified in concluding that as a sympathizer
+with the liberal political tendencies of the nineteenth century Browning
+is of his age. In his quiescence upon the proletarian movement of the
+latter part of the nineteenth century he seems to have been left behind by
+his age. In his insistence upon the worth of the individual to himself and
+to God he is both of his age and beyond it. As has been said of
+philosophy, "It cannot give us bread but it can give us God, soul and
+immortality," so we may say of Browning, that though he did not raise up
+his voice in the cry of the proletarian for bread, he has insisted upon
+the truths of God, the soul and immortality.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+ART SHIBBOLETHS
+
+
+In the foregoing chapters the relations of the poet to the philosophical,
+religious, political, and social movements of the nineteenth century have
+been pointed out. In this and the next chapter some account of his
+relation to the artistic and literary ideals of the century will be
+attempted.
+
+Browning's relation to the art of the century is, of course, twofold,
+dealing as it must with his own conceptions and criticisms of art as well
+as with the position of his own art in the poetic development of the
+century.
+
+In order to understand more fully his own contribution to the developing
+literary standards of the century it may be well first to consider the
+fundamental principles of art laid down by him in various poems wherein he
+has deliberately dealt with the subject.
+
+The poem in which he has most clearly formulated the general principles
+underlying the growth of art is the "Parleying" with Charles Avison.
+Though music is the special art under consideration, the rules of growth
+obtaining in that are equally applicable to other arts. They are found to
+be, as we should expect in Browning, a combination of the ideas of
+evolution and conservation. Though the standards of art change and
+develop, because as man's soul evolves, more complex forms are needed to
+express his deeper experiences, his wider vision, yet in each stage of the
+development there is an element of permanent beauty which by the aid of
+the historical sense man may continue to enjoy. That element of permanence
+exists when genuine feeling and aspiration find expression in forms of
+art. The element of change grows out of the fact that both the thought
+expressed and the form in which it is expressed are partial manifestations
+of the beauty or truth toward which feeling aspires; hence the need of
+fresh attempts to reach the infinite. The permanence of feeling,
+expressing itself in ever new forms, is brought out finely in this
+passage:
+
+                                          "Truths escape
+  Time's insufficient garniture: they fade,
+  They fall--those sheathings now grown sere, whose aid
+  Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine
+    And free through march frost: May dews crystalline
+    Nourish truth merely,--does June boast the fruit
+  As--not new vesture merely but, to boot,
+  Novel creation? Soon shall fade and fall
+  Myth after myth--the husk-like lies I call
+  New truth's Corolla-safeguard."
+
+In another passage is shown how the permanence of feeling conserves even
+the form, if we will bring ourselves into touch with it:
+
+                                "Never dream
+  That what once lived shall ever die! They seem
+  Dead--do they? lapsed things lost in limbo? Bring
+  Our life to kindle theirs, and straight each king
+  Starts, you shall see, stands up."
+
+This kindling of an old form with our own life is more difficult in the
+case of music than it is in painting or poetry, for in these we have a
+concrete form to deal with--a form which reflects the thought with much
+more definiteness than music is able to do. The strength and weakness, at
+once, of music is that it gives expression to subtler regions of thought
+and feeling than the other arts, at the same time that the form is more
+evanescent, because fashioned out of elements infinitely less related to
+nature than those of other art forms. In his poems on music, the poet
+always emphasizes these aspects of music. Its supremacy as a means of
+giving expression to the subtlest regions of feeling is dwelt upon in
+"Abt Vogler" and "Fifine at the Fair." The Abbe, from the standpoint of
+the creator of music, feels so strongly from the inside its power for
+expressing infinite aspiration that in his ecstasy he exclaims: "The rest
+may reason and welcome. 'Tis we musicians know." Upon the evanescence of
+the form peculiar emphasis is also laid in this poem, through the fact
+that the music is improvised. Yet even this fact does not mean the entire
+annihilation of the form. In the tenth stanza of the poem the idea of the
+permanence of the art form as well as of the feeling is expanded into a
+symbol of the immortality of all good:
+
+  "All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;
+    Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
+  Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
+    When eternity confirms the conception of an hour,
+  The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
+    The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
+  Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
+    Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by."
+
+The sophistical arguer in "Fifine" feels this same power of music to
+express thoughts not to be made palpable in any other manner.
+
+                        "Words struggle with the weight
+  So feebly of the False, thick element between
+  Our soul, the True, and Truth! which, but that intervene
+  False shows of things, were reached as easily by thought
+  Reducible to word, and now by yearnings wrought
+  Up with thy fine free force, oh Music, that canst thrill,
+  Electrically win a passage through the lid
+  Of earthly sepulchre, our words may push against,
+  Hardly transpierce as thou."
+
+And again, in another passage, he gives to music the power of conserving a
+mood of feeling, which in this case is not an exalted one, since it is one
+that chimes in with his own rather questionable feeling for Fifine, the
+fiz-gig. It is found in Schumann's "Carnival":
+
+  "Thought hankers after speech, while no speech may evince
+  Feeling like music,--mine, o'er-burthened with each gift
+  From every visitant, at last resolved to shift
+  Its burthen to the back of some musician dead
+  And gone, who feeling once what I feel now, instead
+  Of words, sought sounds, and saved forever, in the same,
+  Truth that escapes prose,--nay, puts poetry to shame.
+  I read the note, I strike the Key, I bid _record_
+  The instrument--thanks greet the veritable word!
+  And not in vain I urge: 'O dead and gone away,
+  Assist who struggles yet, thy strength becomes my stay,
+  Thy record serve as well to register--I felt
+  And knew thus much of truth! With me, must knowledge melt
+  Into surmise and doubt and disbelief unless
+  Thy music reassure--I gave no idle guess,
+  But gained a certitude I yet may hardly keep!
+  What care? since round is piled a monumental heap
+  Of music that conserves the assurance, thou as well
+  Was certain of the same! thou, master of the spell,
+  Mad'st moonbeams marble, didst _record_ what other men
+  Feel only to forget!'"
+
+The man in the case is merely an appreciator, not a creator, yet he
+experiences with equal force music's power as a recorder of feeling. He
+notes also that the feeling must appear from time to time in a new dress,
+
+                              "the stuff that's made
+  To furnish man with thought and feeling is purveyed
+  Substantially the same from age to age, with change
+  Of the outside only for successive feasters."
+
+In this case, the old tunes have actually been worked over by the more
+modern composer whose form has not yet sufficiently gone by to fail of an
+immediate appeal to this person with feelings kindled by similar
+experiences. What the speaker in the poem perceives is not merely the fact
+of the feelings experienced but the power of the music to take him off
+upon a long train of more or less philosophical reasoning born of that
+very element of change. In this power of suggestiveness lies music's
+greater range of spiritual force even when the feeling expressed is not of
+the deepest.
+
+If we look at his poems on painting, the same principles of art are
+insisted upon except that more emphasis is laid upon the positive value of
+the incompleteness of the form. In so far as painting or sculpture reaches
+a perfect unity of thought and form it loses its power of suggesting an
+infinite beauty beyond any that our earth-born race may express.
+
+This in Browning's opinion is the limitation of Greek art. It touches
+perfection or completion in expression and in so doing limits its range to
+the brief passion of a day. The effect of such art is to arouse a sort of
+despair, for it so far transcends merely human beauty that there seems
+nothing left to accomplish:
+
+  "So, testing your weakness by their strength,
+    Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty
+  Measured by Art in your breadth and length,
+    You learned--to submit is a mortal's duty."
+
+When such a deadlock as this is reached through the stultifying effect of
+an art expression which seems to have embodied all there is of passion and
+physical beauty, the one way out is to turn away from the abject
+contemplation of such art and go back again to humanity itself, in whose
+widening nature may be discovered the promise of an eternity of
+progression. Therefore, "To cries of Greek art and what more wish you?"
+the poet would have it that the early painters replied:
+
+          "To become now self-acquainters,
+    And paint man, whatever the issue!
+  Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray,
+    New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters:
+  To bring the invisible full into play!
+    Let the visible go to the dogs--what matters?"
+
+The revolution in art started by these early worthies had more of
+spiritual promise in it than the past perfection--"The first of the new,
+in our race's story, beats the last of the old."
+
+His emphasis here upon the return to humanity in order to gain a new
+source of inspiration in art is further illustrated in his attitude toward
+the two painters which he portrays so splendidly: Fra Lippo Lippi, the
+realist, whose Madonnas looked like real women, and who has scandalized
+some critics on this account, and Andrea del Sarto, the faultless painter,
+who exclaims in despair as he gazes upon a picture by Raphael, in which he
+sees a fault to pardon in the drawing's line, an error that he could alter
+for the better, "But all the play, the insight and the stretch," beyond
+him.
+
+The importance of basing art upon the study of the human body is later
+insisted upon in Francis Furini, not as an end in itself, but as the
+dwelling place of the soul. "Let my pictures prove I know," says Furini,
+
+  "Somewhat of what this fleshly frame of ours
+  Or is or should be, how the soul empowers
+  The body to reveal its every mood
+  Of love and hate, pour forth its plenitude
+  Of passion."
+
+The evolutionary ideal appears again in his utterances upon poetry, though
+when speaking of poetry it is the value of the subject matter and its
+intimate relation to the form upon which he dwells.
+
+The little poem "Popularity" shows as clearly as any the importance which
+he attaches to a new departure in poetic expression, besides giving vent
+to his scorn of the multitude which sees nothing in the work of the
+innovator but which is ready at a later date to laud his imitators. Any
+minor poet, for that matter, any Nokes or Stokes who merely prints blue
+according to the poetic conventions of the past, possessing not a
+suspicion of the true inspiration which goes to the making of a poet of
+the new order, is more acceptable to an unseeing public than him with
+power to fish "the murex up" that contains the precious drop of royal
+blue.
+
+More than one significant hint may be gleaned from his verse in regard to
+his opinion upon the formal side of the poet's art. In "Transcendentalism"
+he has his fling at the didactic poet who pleases to speak naked thoughts
+instead of draping them in sights and sounds, for "song" is the art of the
+poet. Some stout mage like him of Halberstadt has his admiration, who with
+a
+
+                "'Look you!' vents a brace of rhymes,
+  And in there breaks the sudden rose herself,
+  Over us, under, round us every side,
+  Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs
+  And musty volumes, Boehme's book and all,--
+  Buries us with a glory young once more,
+  Pouring heaven into this shut house of life."
+
+He was equally averse to an ornate classical embellishment of a latter day
+subject or to a looking at nature through mythopoeic Greek eyes. This is
+driven home in the splendid fooling in "Gerard de Lairesse" where the poet
+himself indulges by way of a joke in some high-flown classical imagery in
+derision of the style of Lairesse and hints covertly probably at the
+nineteenth-century masters of classical resuscitation, in subject matter
+and allusion, Swinburne and Morris. Reacting to soberer mood, he
+reiterates his belief in the utter deadness of Greek ideals of art,
+speaking with a strength of conviction so profound as to make one feel
+that here at least Browning suffered from a decided limitation, all the
+more strange, too, when one considers his own masterly treatment of Greek
+subjects. To the poets whose poetic creed is
+
+              "Dream afresh old godlike shapes,
+  Recapture ancient fable that escapes,
+  Push back reality, repeople earth
+  With vanished falseness, recognize no worth
+  In fact new-born unless 'tis rendered back
+  Pallid by fancy, as the western rack
+  Of fading cloud bequeaths the lake some gleam
+  Of its gone glory!"
+
+he would reply,
+
+                          "Let things be--not seem,
+  I counsel rather,--do, and nowise dream!
+  Earth's young significance is all to learn;
+  The dead Greek lore lies buried in the urn
+  Where who seeks fire finds ashes. Ghost, forsooth!
+  What was the best Greece babbled of as truth?
+  A shade, a wretched nothing,--sad, thin, drear,
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                    Sad school
+  Was Hades! Gladly,--might the dead but slink
+  To life back,--to the dregs once more would drink
+  Each interloper, drain the humblest cup
+  Fate mixes for humanity."
+
+The rush onward to the supreme is uppermost in the poet's mind in this
+poem. Though he does indulge in the refrain that there shall never be one
+lost good echoing the thought in "Charles Avison," the climax of his mood
+is in the contemplation of the evolutionary force of the soul which must
+leave Greek art behind and find new avenues of beauty:
+
+                                  "The Past indeed
+  Is past, gives way before Life's best and last
+  The all-including Future! What were life
+  Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife
+  Through the ambiguous Present to the goal
+  Of some all-reconciling Future? Soul,
+  Nothing has been which shall not bettered be
+  Hereafter,--leave the root, by law's decree
+  Whence springs the ultimate and perfect tree!
+  Busy thee with unearthing root? Nay, climb--
+  Quit trunk, branch, leaf and flower--reach, rest sublime
+  Where fruitage ripens in the blaze of day."
+
+When it comes to the subject matter of poetry, Browning constantly insists
+that it should be the study of the human soul. A definite statement as to
+the range of subjects under this general material of poetry is put forth
+very early in his poetical career in "Paracelsus" and it is all-inclusive.
+It is the passage where Aprile describes how universal he wished to make
+his sympathy as a poet. No one is to be left out of his all-embracing
+democracy.
+
+Such, then, are his general principles in regard to poetic development and
+subject matter. These do not touch upon the question so often discussed of
+the relative value of the subjective as against the objective poet. This
+point the poet considers in "Sordello," where he throws in his weight on
+the side of the objective poet. In the passage in the third book the poet,
+speaking in person, gives illustrations of three sorts of poetic
+composition: the dramatic, the descriptive and the meditative; the first
+belongs to the objective, the second, not distinctively to either, and the
+third to the subjective manner of writing. The dramatic method is the most
+forceful, for it imparts the gift of seeing to others, while the
+descriptive and meditative merely tell what they saw, or, worse still,
+talk about it.
+
+Further indications of his allegiance to the dramatic form of poetry as
+the supreme one are found in his poems inspired by Shakespeare, "House"
+and "Shop," but we must turn to a pregnant bit of his prose in order to
+find his exact feeling upon the relations of the subjective and objective
+poet, together with a clear conception of what he meant by a dramatic
+poet, which was something more than Shakespeare's "holding the mirror up
+to nature." In his view the dramatic poet must have the vision of the seer
+as well as the penetration of a psychologist. He must hold the mirror up
+not only to nature, regarded as phenomena, but to the human soul, and he
+must perceive the relation of that human soul to the universal. He must in
+fact plunge beneath the surface of actions and events and bring forth to
+the light the psychic and cosmic causes of these things. The passage
+referred to in the "Introduction to the Shelley Letters" points out how in
+the evolution of poetry there will be the play and interplay of the
+subjective and the objective faculties upon each other, with the probable
+result of the arising of poets who will combine the two sorts of faculty.
+While Browning's own sympathy with the dramatic poet is as fully evident
+here as in the passage in "Sordello," he realizes, as perhaps he did not
+at that time, when he was himself breaking away from Shelley's influence,
+the value of the subjective method in carrying on the process of poetic
+evolution:
+
+    "It would be idle to inquire, of these two kinds of poetic faculty in
+    operation, which is the higher or even rarer endowment. If the
+    subjective might seem to be the ultimate requirement of every age,
+    the objective, in the strictest state, must still retain its original
+    value. For it is with this word, as starting-point and basis alike,
+    that we shall always have to concern ourselves: the world is not to be
+    learned and thrown aside, but reverted to and relearned. The spiritual
+    comprehension may be infinitely subtilized, but the raw material it
+    operates upon must remain. There may be no end of the poets who
+    communicate to us what they see in an object with reference to their
+    own individuality; what it was before they saw it, in reference to the
+    aggregate human mind, will be as desirable to know as ever. Nor is
+    there any reason why these two modes of poetic faculty may not issue
+    hereafter from the same poet in successive perfect works, examples of
+    which, according to what are now considered the exigencies of art, we
+    have hitherto possessed in distinct individuals only. A mere running
+    in of the one faculty upon the other is, of course, the ordinary
+    circumstance. Far more rarely it happens that either is found so
+    decidedly prominent and superior as to be pronounced comparatively
+    pure: while of the perfect shield, with the gold and the silver side
+    set up for all comers to challenge, there has yet been no instance. A
+    tribe of successors (Homerides), working more or less in the same
+    spirit, dwell on his discoveries and reinforce his doctrine; till, at
+    unawares, the world is found to be subsisting wholly on the shadow of
+    a reality, on sentiments diluted from passions, on the tradition of a
+    fact, the convention of a moral, the straw of last year's harvest.
+    Then is the imperative call for the appearance of another sort of
+    poet, who shall at once replace this intellectual rumination of food
+    swallowed long ago, by a supply of the fresh and living swathe;
+    getting at new substance by breaking up the assumed wholes into parts
+    of independent and unclassed value, careless of the unknown laws for
+    recombining them (it will be the business of yet another poet to
+    suggest those hereafter), prodigal of objects for men's outer and not
+    inner sight; shaping for their uses a new and different creation from
+    the last, which it displaces by the right of life over death,--to
+    endure until, in the inevitable process, its very sufficiency to
+    itself shall require, at length, an exposition of its affinity to
+    something higher--when the positive yet conflicting facts shall again
+    precipitate themselves under a harmonizing law, and one more degree
+    will be apparent for a poet to climb in that mighty ladder, of which,
+    however cloud-involved and undefined may glimmer the topmost step, the
+    world dares no longer doubt that its gradations ascend."
+
+If we measure Browning's own work by the poetic standards which he has
+himself set up in the course of that work, it is quite evident that he has
+on the whole lived up to them. He has shown himself to be an illustration
+of the evolutionary principles in which he believes by breaking away from
+all previous standards of taste in poetry. The history of poetry in
+England has shown this to be a distinctive characteristic of all the
+greatest English poets. From Shakespeare down they have one and all run
+afoul of the critics whose special province seems to be to set up literary
+shibboleths which every genius is bent upon disregarding. When Spenser was
+inventing his stanza, verse critics were abject in their worship of
+hexameters, and their hatred of bald rhymes. Though these sticklers for
+classical forms could see clearly enough that Spenser was possessed of
+genius, they yet lamented the blindness of one, who might have written
+hexameters, perversely exclaiming "Why a God's name may not we as else the
+Greeks have the kingdom of our own language, and measure our accents by
+the sound, reserving quantity to the verse?" When Milton appears and finds
+blank verse the medium best suited to his subject, he comes up against the
+rhyming standards of his day and is forced to submit to the indignity of
+having his "Paradise Lost" "tagged with rhymes," as he expresses it, by
+Dryden, who graciously devoted his powers of rhyme to an improved version
+of the poem. Milton was actually obliged to defend himself in his preface
+to "Paradise Lost" for using blank verse, as Browning defends himself in
+the Epilogue to "Pacchiarotto and How We Worked in Distemper" for writing
+"strong" verse instead of the "sweet" verse the critics demand of him.
+
+By the time the nineteenth century dawns the critics are safely intrenched
+in the editorial den, from which, shielded by any sort of shibboleth they
+can get hold of, they may hurl forth their projectiles upon the
+unoffending head of the genius, who, with no chance of firing back in the
+open arena of the magazine, must either suffer in silence or take refuge
+in sarcastic slurs upon his critics in his poetry, for here lies the only
+chance of getting even without waiting for the whirligig of time to bring
+the public round to a recognition of the fact that he is the one who has
+in very truth, "fished the murex up."
+
+The caliber of man who could speak of "The Ode to Immortality" as "a most
+illegible and unintelligible poem," or who wonders that any man in his
+senses could put his name to such a rhapsody as "Endymion," or who
+dismissed "Prometheus Unbound" with the remark that it was a _melange_ of
+nonsense, cockneyism, poverty and pedantry, would hardly be expected to
+welcome "Sordello" with effusion. Even very intelligent people cracked
+unseemly jokes upon the appearance of "Sordello," and what wonder, for
+Browning's British instinct for freedom carried him in this poem to the
+most extreme lengths. In "Pauline" he had allied himself with things
+familiar to the English reader of poetry. Many of the allusions are
+classical and introduced with a rich musicalness that Shelley himself
+might have envied. The reminiscences of Shelley would also come within the
+intellectual acreage of most of the cultured people of the time. And even
+in "Paracelsus," despite the unfamiliarity of the subject, there was
+music and imagery such as to link the art with the admired poetic art of
+the day, but in "Sordello" all bounds are broken.
+
+No one but a delver in the byways of literature could, at that time, have
+been expected to know anything about Sordello; no one but a historian
+could have been expected to know about the complicated struggles of the
+Guelfs and the Ghibellines; no one but a philosopher about the tendencies,
+both political and literary, manifesting themselves in the direction of
+the awakening of democratic ideals in these pre-Dantean days; no one but a
+psychologist about the tortuous windings of Sordello's mind.
+
+Only by special searching into all these regions of knowledge can one
+to-day gain a complete grasp of the situation. He must patiently tread all
+the paths that Browning trod before he can enter into sympathy with the
+poet. Then he will crack no more jokes, but he will marvel at the mind
+which could wield all this knowledge with such consummate familiarity; he
+will grow ecstatic over the splendors of the poem, and will regret its
+redundancy not of diction so much but of detail and its amazing lack of
+organic unity.
+
+No one but a fanatic could claim that "Sordello" is a success as an
+organic work of art. While the poet had a mastery of knowledge, thought
+and feeling, he did not have sufficient mastery of his own form to weld
+these together into a harmonious and convincing whole, such mastery as he,
+for example, shows in "The Ring and the Book," though even in that there
+is some survival of the old redundancy.
+
+One feels when considering "Sordello" as a whole as if gazing upon a
+picture in which the perspective and the high lights and the shadows are
+not well related to each other. As great an abundance of detail is
+expended upon the less important as upon the more important fact, and
+while the details may be interesting enough in themselves, they dislodge
+more important affairs from the center of consciousness. It is, not to be
+too flippant, something like Alice's game of croquet in "Through the
+Looking Glass." When the hedgehog ball is nicely rolled up ready to be
+struck, the flamingo mallet walks off somewhere else.
+
+There, then, in "Sordello" is perhaps the most remarkable departure from
+the accepted in poetic art that an Englishman has ever attempted. In its
+elements of failure, however, it gave "a triumph's evidence," to use the
+poet's own phrase, "of the fulness of the days." In this poem he had
+thrown down the gauntlet. His subject matter was not to be like that of
+any other poet, nor was his form to be like that of any other poet. He
+discarded the flowing music of "Pauline" and of "Paracelsus." His
+allusions were no longer to be classic, but to be directly related to
+whatever subject he had in hand; his style was also to be forth-right and
+related to his subject, strong, idiomatic, rugged, even jolting if need
+be, or noble, sweeping along in large rhythms or couched in rare forms of
+symbolism, but, whatever it was to be, always different from what had
+been.
+
+All he required at the time when "Sordello" appeared was to find that form
+in which he could so unify his powers that his poems would gain the
+organic completeness necessary to a work of art. No matter what new
+regions an artist may push into he must discover the law of being of this
+new region. Unless he does, his art will not convince, but the moment he
+does, all that was not convincing falls into its right place. He becomes
+the master of his art, and relates the new elements in such a way that
+their rightness and their beauty, if not immediately recognized, are sure
+sooner or later to be recognized by the evolving appreciator, who is the
+necessary complement, by the way, of the evolving artist. Before
+"Sordello" Browning had tried three other forms; the subjective narrative
+in "Pauline," the dramatic poem in "Paracelsus," a regular drama in
+"Strafford," which however runs partly parallel with "Sordello" in
+composition. He had also done two or three short dramatic monologues.
+
+He evidently hoped that the regular drama would prove to be the form most
+congenial to him, for he kept on persistently in that form for nearly ten
+years, wrote much magnificent poetry in it and at times attained a
+grandeur of dramatic utterance hardly surpassed except in the master of
+all dramatists, Shakespeare. But while he has attained a very genuine
+success in this form, it is not the success of the popular acting drama.
+His dramas are to-day probably being left farther and farther aside every
+moment in the present exaggerated demands for characters in action, or
+perhaps it might be nearer the truth to say clothes horses in action.
+Besides, the drama of action in character, which is the type of drama
+introduced into English literature by Browning, has reached a more perfect
+development in other hands. Ibsen's dramas are preeminently dramas of
+action in character, but the action moves with such rapidity that the
+audience is almost cheated into thinking they are the old thing over
+again--that is, dramas of characters in action.
+
+Browning's characters in his dramas are presented with a completeness of
+psychological analysis which makes them of paramount interest to those few
+who can and like to listen to people holding forth to any length on the
+stage, and with superb actors, who can give every subtlest change of mood,
+a Browning drama furnishes an opportunity for the utmost intensity of
+pleasure. Still, one cannot help but feel that the impressionistic
+psychology of Ibsen reaches a pinnacle of dramatic art not attained by
+Browning in his plays, delightful in character portrayal as they are, and
+not upon any account to have been missed from dramatic literature.
+
+In the dramatic monologue Browning found just that form which would focus
+his forces, bringing them into the sort of relationship needed to reveal
+the true law of being for his new region of poetic art.
+
+If we inquire just why this form was the true medium for the most perfect
+expression of his genius, I think we may answer that in it, as he has
+developed it, is given an opportunity for the legitimate exercise of his
+mental subtlety. Through the voice of one speaker he can portray not only
+the speaker but one or more other characters, and at the same time show
+the scene setting, and all without any direct description. On the other
+hand, his tendency to redundancy, so marked when he is making a character
+reveal only his own personality, is held in check by the necessity of
+using just those words and turns of expression and dwelling upon just
+those details which will make each character stand out distinctly, and at
+the same time bring the scene before the reader.
+
+The people in his dramatic monologues live before us by means of a
+psychology as impressionistic as that of Ibsen's in his plays. The effect
+is the same as that in a really great impressionistic painting. Nature is
+revealed far more distinctly--the thing of lights and shadows, space and
+movement--than in pictures bent upon endless details of form. "My Last
+Duchess" is one among many fine examples of his method in monologue. In
+that short poem we are made to see what manner of man is the duke, what
+manner of woman the duchess. We see what has been the duke's past, what is
+to be his future, also the present scene, as the duke stands in the hall
+of his palace talking to an ambassador from the count who has come to
+arrange a marriage with the duke for the count's daughter. Besides all
+this a glimpse of the ambassador's attitude of mind is given. This is done
+by an absolutely telling choice of words and by an organic relationing of
+the different elements. The law of his genius asserts itself.
+
+Browning's own ideal of the poet who makes others see was not completely
+realized until he had perfected a form which would lend itself most
+perfectly to the manner of thing which he desired to make others
+see--namely, the human soul in all its possible manifestations of feeling
+and mood, good, bad, and indifferent, from the uninspired organist who
+struggles with a mountainous fugue to the inspired improvisor whose soul
+ascends to God on the wings of his music, from the unknown sensitive
+painter who cannot bear to have his pictures the subject of criticism or
+commerce to the jolly life-loving Fra Lippo, from the jealous, vindictive
+woman of "The Laboratory" to the vision-seeing Pompilia, from Ned Bratts
+to Bishop Blougram, and so on--so many and wonderful that custom cannot
+state their infinite variety.
+
+Consistent, so far, with his own theories we find the work of Browning to
+be. He also follows his ideal in the discarding of classical allusion
+and illustration. Part of his dictum that the form should express the
+thought is shown in his habitual fitting of his allusions to the subject
+he is treating. By this means he produces his atmosphere and brings the
+scene clearly before us; witness his constant references to Molinos and
+his influence in "The Ring and the Book," an influence which was making
+itself felt in all classes of society at the time when the actual tragedy
+portrayed in the poem occurred. This habit, of course, brings into his
+poetry a far wider range of allusions unfamiliar to his contemporaries
+than is to be found in other Victorian poets, and makes it necessary that
+these should be "looked up" before an adequate enjoyment of their fitness
+is possible. Hence the Browning societies, so often held up to ridicule by
+the critics, who blindly prefer to show their superior attitude of mind in
+regard to everything they do not know, and growl about his obscurity, to
+welcoming any movement which means an increase of general culture. The
+Browning societies have not only done much to make Browning's unusual
+allusions common matters of knowledge, but they have helped to keep alive
+a taste for all poetry in an age when poetry has needed all the friendly
+support it could get.
+
+All great poets lead the ordinary mind to unfamiliar regions of knowledge
+and thereby to fresh planes of enjoyment. That Browning has outdone all
+other poets in this particular should be to his honor, not to his
+dispraise.
+
+In one very marked direction, however, he is not a perfect exemplar of his
+own theories--that is, he is not always consistently dramatic. He belongs
+to that order of poets described by himself in the Shelley Introduction as
+neither completely subjective nor completely objective, but with the two
+faculties at times running in upon each other. He is often absolutely
+objective in his expression of a mood or a feeling, but the moment the
+mood takes upon it the tinge of thought we begin to feel Browning himself.
+
+The fundamental principles upon which he bases his own solution of the
+problems of existence are seen to crop out, colored, it is true, by the
+personality of the speaker, but yet traceable to their source in the
+mental make up of Browning himself. It may well be that Browning has come
+so near to the ultimate truth discoverable by man in his fundamental
+principles that they are actually universal truths, to be found lying deep
+down at the roots of all more partial expressions, just as gravitation,
+conservation of energy, evolution underlie every phenomena of nature,
+and therefore when a Pope in "The Ring and the Book," a Prince
+Hohenstiel-Swangau, a Bishop Blougram, a Cleon or a John in "The Death in
+the Desert," give utterance to their views upon life, they are bound to
+touch from one or another angle the basic principles of life common to all
+humanity as well as to the poet--the center within us all where "truth
+abides in fulness."
+
+This would seem an even more complete fusing of the two faculties in one
+poet than that spoken of by Browning, where a poet would issue successive
+works, in some of them the one faculty and in some of them the other
+faculty being supreme.
+
+That Browning was, to a certain extent, a poet of this third order of
+which he prophesied is true, for he has written a number of poems like "La
+Saisiaz," "Reverie," various of his prologues and epilogues which are
+purely subjective in content. There are also subjective passages in the
+midst of other poems, like those in "Sordello," "Prince Hohenstiel," the
+"Parleyings," etc. If we place such a poem as "Reverie" side by side with
+"Fra Lippo Lippi" we see well-nigh perfect illustrations of the two
+faculties as they existed in the one poet, Browning. On the other hand,
+in those poems where the thought, as I have said, suggests Browning, in
+the speech of his characters he has something of the quality of what
+Browning calls the subjective poet of modern classification. "Gifted like
+the objective poet, with the fuller perception of nature and man, he is
+impelled to embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to
+the many below as to the One above him, the supreme intelligence which
+apprehends all things in their absolute truth, an ultimate view ever
+aspired to, if but partially attained, by the poet's soul."
+
+Browning may be said to have carried to its flood tide the "Liberal
+Movement in English Literature," as Courthope calls it, inaugurated at the
+dawn of the century by the Lake School, which reacted against the correct
+school of Dryden and Pope. Along with the earlier poets of the century he
+shared lack of appreciation at the hands of critics in general. The
+critics had been bred in the school of the eighteenth century, and
+naturally would be incapable of understanding a man whose thought was
+permeated with the doctrines of evolution, then an unknown quantity except
+to the elect in scientific circles, and not to become the possession of
+the thinking world at large until beyond the middle of the century;
+whose soul was full of the ardor of democracy, shown not only in his
+choice and treatment of subjects, but in his reckless independence of all
+the shibboleths of the past; and whose liberalness in the treatment of
+moral and religious problems was such as to scandalize many in an age when
+the law forbade that a man should marry his deceased wife's sister, and
+when the Higher Criticism of the Bible had not yet migrated to England
+from Germany; and, finally, whose style was everything that was atrocious
+because entirely different from anything they had seen before.
+
+The century had to grow up to him. It is needless to say that it did so.
+Just as out of the turmoil of conflicting scientific and religious thought
+has emerged a serene belief in man's spiritual destiny, so out of the
+turmoil of conflicting schools of criticism has arisen a perception of the
+value of the new, the original, the different in art. Critics begin to
+apply the principles of evolution to their criticism as Browning applied
+it to his art, with the result that they no longer measure by past
+standards of art but by relating the art to the life of the time in its
+various manifestations, not forgetting that the poet or the dramatist may
+have a further vision of what is to come than any other man of his age.
+
+The people first, for the most part, found out that here in Browning's
+work was a new force, and calmly formed themselves into groups to study
+what manner of force it might be, regardless of the sneers of newspaperdom
+and conventional academies. And gradually to the few appreciative critics
+of the early days have been added one authoritative voice after another
+until the chorus of praise has become a large one, and Browning, though
+later than any great poet of the century, is coming into his own.
+
+In a certain chart of English literature with which I am acquainted,
+wherein the poets are graphically represented in mountain ranges with
+peaks of various heights, Tennyson is shown as the towering peak of the
+Victorian Era, while Browning is a sturdy but much lower peak with a
+blunted top. This is quite symbolic of the general attitude toward
+Browning at the end of the century, for, with all the appreciation, there
+has been on the part of authority a disinclination to assign to him the
+chief place among the poets of the Victorian Era. Courthope, who most of
+the time preserves a remarkable reticence upon Browning, voices this
+general attitude in a remark ventured upon in one of his lectures in
+1900. He says:
+
+"No one who is capable of appreciating genius will refuse to admire the
+powers of this poet, the extent of his sympathy and interest in external
+things, the boldness of his invention, the energy of his analysis, the
+audacity of his experiments. But so absolutely does he exclude all
+consideration for the reader from his choice of subject, so arbitrarily,
+in his treatment of his themes, does he compel his audience to place
+themselves at his own point of view, that the life of his art depends
+entirely upon his own individuality. Should future generations be less
+inclined than our own to surrender their imagination to his guidance, he
+will not be able to appeal to them through that element of life which lies
+in the Universal."
+
+To the present writer this seems simply like a confession on Courthope's
+part that he was unable to perceive in Browning the elements of the
+Universal which are most assuredly there, and which were fully recognized
+by a Scotch writer, Dawson, at the same time that Courthope was
+questioning his power to hold coming generations.
+
+"The fashions of the world may change," writes Dawson, "and the old doubts
+may wear themselves out and sink like shadows out of sight in the
+morning of a stronger faith; but even so the world will still turn to the
+finer poems of Browning for intellectual stimulus, for the purification of
+pity and of pathos, for the exaltation of hope.
+
+"Or if the darkness still thickens, all the more will men turn to this
+strong man of the race, who has wrestled and prevailed; who has illumined
+with imaginative insight the deepest problems of the ages; who has made
+his poetry not merely the vehicle of pathos, passion, tenderness, fancy,
+and imagination, but also of the most robust and masculine thought. He has
+written lyrics which must charm all who love, epics which must move all
+who act, songs which must cheer all who suffer, poems which must fascinate
+all who think; and when 'Time hath sundered shell from pearl,' however
+stern may be the scrutiny, it may be said that there will remain enough of
+Robert Browning to give him rank among the greatest of poets, and secure
+for him the sure reward of fame."
+
+But it is to France we must go for the surest authoritative note--that
+land of the Academy and correct taste which _hums_ and _hahs_ over its own
+Immortals in proverbially unpenetrating conclave. No less a man than
+Taine declares that Browning stands first among English poets--"the most
+excellent where excellence is greatness, the most gifted where genius is a
+common dower."
+
+While there can be no doubt that Browning outdid all the other great poets
+of his time in "azure feats," in developing an absolutely self-centered
+ideal of art, which is yet so true to the ultimate tendencies of the
+century, indeed to those of all time, for evolution and democracy are
+henceforth the torch-bearers of the human soul--each of the other
+half-dozen or so greatest poets had distinct and independent
+individualities which were more nearly the outcome of the current
+tendencies of the time than Browning's.
+
+[Illustration: ALFRED TENNYSON]
+
+Tennyson was equally familiar with the thought and much more familiar with
+the politics of the day, but there is an infinite difference in their
+attitude. Browning, if I may be excused for quoting one of Shakespeare's
+most abused phrases, rides over the century like a "naked new-born babe
+striding the blast." Tennyson ambles through it on a palfrey which has a
+tendency to flounder into every slough of despond it comes to. This may
+seem to be putting it rather too strongly, but is it not true? Browning
+has the vision belonging to the latest child of time. He never follows; he
+leads. With his eyes fixed upon a far-off future where man shall be _man_
+at last, he faces every problem with the intrepidity of an Oedipus
+confronting the Sphynx. The mystery of its riddles has no terrors for him.
+It is given to him as to few others to see the ineffable beauty of life's
+mystery, the promise it holds out of eternal joy. While he frequently
+discourses upon the existence of evil, he never for a moment admits any
+doubt into his own utmost soul of the beneficent part evil is meant to
+play in the molding of human destinies. Mr. Santayana has called him a
+barbarous poet. In a certain sense he is, if to be born among the first on
+a new plane of psychic perception where of no account become the endless
+metaphysical meanderings of the intellect, which cry "proof, proof, where
+there can be no proof," is barbarous. It was doubtless largely owing to
+this power of vision reminding us again somewhat of the child's in
+Maeterlinck's "Les Aveugles" which kept Browning from tinkering in the
+half-measures of the political leaders of his time. His plane is not
+unlike that of his own Lazarus, about whom the Arab physician says:
+
+  "The man is witless of the size, the sum,
+  The value in proportion of all things,
+  Or whether it be little or be much.
+  Discourse to him of prodigious armament
+  Assembled to besiege his city now,
+  And of the passing of a mule with gourds--
+  'Tis one! Then take it on the other side,
+  Speak of some trifling fact,--he will gaze rapt
+  With stupor at its very littleness,
+  (For as I see) as if in that indeed
+  He caught prodigious import, whole results;
+  And so will turn to us the bystanders
+  In ever the same stupor (note this point)
+  That we, too, see not with his opened eyes."
+
+The import of an event is everything. Large imports may lurk more surely
+in the awakening of some obscure soul than in the pageantry of law
+bringing a tardy and wholly inadequate measure of justice to humanity.
+Though Tennyson talks of the "far-off divine event" he has no burning
+conviction of it and does not ride toward it with triumph in his eye and
+flaming joy in his soul. As he ambles along, steeping himself in the
+science of the time, its revelations make him nervous; he falls into doubt
+from which he can only extricate himself by holding on to belief, a very
+different thing from Browning's vision.
+
+Thus it happens that Tennyson voices the feelings of an immense class of
+cultured people, who have gone through the century in the same ambling
+fashion, a prey to its fears, intellectual enough to see the truths of
+science, but not spiritual enough to see the import of the dawn of the new
+day.
+
+Tennyson, then, quite of and in his time, would desire above all things to
+appeal to it as it appealed to him. He waxes enthusiastic over
+conventional politics, he treats his social problems so entirely in
+accordance with the conventions of the day that they are not problems at
+all, and he is quite in love with the beauty of aristocratic society,
+though he occasionally descends to the people for a subject. These are all
+entirely sufficient reasons for his popularity as a poet during his life,
+further emphasized by the added fact that having no subject matter (that
+is thought-content) wherewith to startle the world by strangeness, he took
+the wiser part of delighting them with his exquisite music.
+
+Though so satisfactory a representative of his times, he did outrage one
+of the shibboleths of the critics in his efforts to find a new and richer
+music than poets had before used by bringing scientific imagery into his
+verse. Of all the absurd controversies indulged in by critics, the most
+absurd is that fought out around the contention that science and poetry
+cannot be made to harmonize. Wordsworth was keen enough to see this before
+the rest of the world and prophesied in the preface to his "Lyrical
+Ballads" that science would one day become the closest of allies to
+poetry, and Tennyson was brilliant enough to seize the new possibilities
+in scientific language with a realization that nature imagery might almost
+be made over by the use in describing it of scientific epithets. A famous
+illustration of the happy effects he produced by these means is in the
+lines "Move eastward happy Earth and round again to-night." His
+observation of Nature, moreover, had a scientific accuracy, which made
+possible far more delicate and individual descriptions of Nature's aspects
+than had been produced before. It was also a happy thought for him to
+weave so much of his poetry around the Arthurian legends. Beautiful in
+themselves, they came nearer home than classical or Italian legends, and,
+when made symbolic of an ideal which must appeal to the heart of every
+cultured Englishman, who regarded himself as a sort of prototype of the
+blameless King Arthur, and whose grief at the failure of the social fabric
+planned by him would be as poignant as that of the King himself, they
+carried with them a romantic and irresistible attraction.
+
+The reasons why Tennyson should appeal especially to the nineteenth
+century cultured and highly respectable Englishman far outweighed any
+criticisms that might be made by critics on his departure from poetic
+customs of the past. He pleased the highest powers in the land, became
+Laureate and later Lord Tennyson. He will therefore always remain the poet
+most thoroughly representative of that especial sort of beauty belonging
+to a social order which has reached a climax of refinement and
+intelligence, but which, through its very self-satisfaction, cuts itself
+off from a perception of the true value of the new forces coming into play
+in the on-rushing stream of social development.
+
+The other poets who divide with Browning and Tennyson the highest honors
+of the Victorian Era are Landor, Arnold, Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, Mrs.
+Browning, George Meredith.
+
+Landor and Arnold preserved more than any of the others a genuine
+classical aroma in their verse, and on this account have always been
+delighted in by a few. After all, the people may not immediately accept a
+poet of too great independence, but they are least of all likely to grow
+enthusiastic over anything reactionary either in style or thought.
+Romantic elements of not too startling a character win the favor of most
+readers.
+
+Though classic in style both these poets reflected phases of the century's
+thought. Landor differed from Browning in the fact that he frequently
+expressed himself vigorously upon the subject of current politics. His
+political principles were not of the most advanced type, however. He
+believed in the notion of a free society, but seems to have thought the
+best way of attaining it would be a commonwealth in which the wise should
+rule, and see that the interests of all should be secured. Still his
+insistence upon liberty, however old-fashioned his ideas of the means by
+which it should be maintained, puts him in the line of the democratic
+march of the century.
+
+Swinburne calls him his master, and represents himself in verse as having
+learned many wise and gracious things of him, but his thought was not
+sufficiently progressive to triumph over the classicism of his style in an
+age of romantic poetry, though there will always be those who hold on to
+the shibboleth that, after all, the classic is the real thing in poetry,
+never realizing that where the romantic is old enough, it, too, becomes
+classic.
+
+Matthew Arnold stands in poetry where men like Huxley and Clifford stood
+in science, who, Childe-Roland like, came to the dark tower, calmly put
+the slug horn to their lips and blew a blast of courage. Science had
+undermined their belief in a future life as well as destroying the
+revealed basis of moral action. In such a man the intellectual nature
+overbalances the intuitional, and when inherited belief based on authority
+is destroyed, there is nothing but the habit of morality left.
+
+Arnold has had the sympathy of those who could no longer believe in their
+revealed religion, but who loved it and regretted its passing away from
+them. He gives expression to this feeling in lines like these:
+
+                      "The sea of faith
+  Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
+  Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
+  But now I only hear
+  Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
+  Retreating, to the breath
+  Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
+  And naked shingles of the world."
+
+The regret for something beautiful that is gone is capable of exquisite
+poetic treatment, but it is not an abiding note of the century. It
+represents only one phase of its thought, and that a transcient one,
+because it could be felt with poignancy only by those whose lives were
+rudely shaken by the destruction of the ideal in which they had been bred
+and in which they devoutly believed. Arnold's sympathetic treatment of
+this phase of doubt seems, however, to have been of incalculable service
+to those who felt as he did. It softened the anguish of the shock to have
+not only the beauty of the past dwelt upon, but to have the beauty of
+courage in the face of a destroyed ideal erected into a new ideal for
+living brave and noble lives. In "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse" is a
+fine example of the beauty which may be imparted to a mood as melancholy
+as could well be imagined:
+
+  "Not as their friend, or child, I speak!
+    But as, on some far northern strand,
+  Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek
+    In pity and mournful awe might stand
+  Before some fallen Runic stone--
+  For both were faiths, and both are gone.
+
+  "Wandering between two worlds, one dead
+    The other powerless to be born,
+  With nowhere yet to rest my head,
+    Like these, on earth I wait forlorn,
+  Their faith, my tears, the world deride--
+  I come to shed them at their side."
+
+Such hope as he has to offer comes out in stanzas like the following,
+but all is dependent upon strenuous living:
+
+  "No, no! the energy of life may be
+  Kept on after the grave, but not begun;
+  And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife,
+  From strength to strength advancing--only he,
+  His soul well-knit, and all his battle won,
+  Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life."
+
+Nor shall better days on earth come without struggle since life
+
+  "Is on all sides o'ershadowed by the high
+  Uno'erleaped Mountains of Necessity,
+  Sparing us narrower margin than we deem.
+  Nor will that day dawn at a human nod,
+  When, bursting through the network, superposed
+  By selfish occupation--plot and plan,
+  Lust, avarice, envy-liberated man,
+  All difference with his fellow-mortal closed,
+  Shall be left standing face to face with God."
+
+Though Arnold was sternly criticised he had before the end of the century
+been accorded his proper place as a poet, which was that of the chief poet
+between the greatest lights of the century, Browning and Tennyson and the
+pre-Raphaelite group. Gosse, with more penetration than can always be
+accorded to him, declares that "His devotion to beauty, the composure,
+simplicity and dignity of his temper, and his deep moral sincerity gave
+to his poetry a singular charm which may prove as durable as any element
+in modern verse."
+
+The phase of romanticism carried to its climax by the pre-Raphaelite poets
+Rossetti and his sister, Morris and Swinburne had, like the work of
+Tennyson, its full recognition, in its own time, because these poets, like
+him, have put into exquisite music romantic subjects derived both from the
+classics and from mediaeval legend. The new note of sensuousness, due
+largely to the Italian influence of Rossetti, with his sensuous
+temperament, his intensity of passion and his love of art, and also in
+Morris and Swinburne to their pagan feeling, one of the elements
+inaugurated by the general breaking down of orthodox religious ideals
+through the encroachments of science, does not seem to have affected their
+popularity.
+
+As there were those who would sympathize with the Tennysonian attitude
+toward doubt, and those who would sympathize with Matthew Arnold's, there
+were others to feel like Swinburne, pantheistic, and, like Morris, utterly
+hopeless of a future, while others again might criticise the pagan
+feeling, but, with their inheritance of beauty from Tennyson and his
+predecessors of the dawn of the century, would delight in these new
+developments of the romantic spirit.
+
+[Illustration: A. C. SWINBURNE]
+
+Ruskin is said to have been the original inspirer of these four poets,
+though Fitz-Gerald's "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam was not without its
+influence. But as Edmund Gosse says, "The attraction of the French
+romances of chivalry for William Morris, of Tuscan painting for D. G.
+Rossetti, of the spirit of English Gothic architecture for Christina
+Rossetti, of the combination of all these with Greek and Elizabethan
+elements for Swinburne, were to be traced back to start--words given by
+the prophetic author of the 'Seven Lamps of Architecture.'"
+
+Though the first books of this group of poets, the "Defence of Guenevere"
+(1858), "Goblin Market," "Early Italian Poets," "Queen Mother and
+Rosamond" (1861), did not make any impression on the public, with the
+publication of Swinburne's "Atalanta in Calydon" an interest was awakened
+which reached a climax with the publication of Rossetti's poems in 1870.
+Rossetti had thrown these poems into his wife's grave, as the world knows,
+but was prevailed upon to have them recovered and published.
+
+In the success of this group was vindicated at last the principles of the
+naturalists of the dawn of the century. Here was a mixture of color, of
+melody, of mysticism, of sensuousness, of elaboration of form which
+carried originality and independence as far as it could well go in a
+direction which painted life primarily from the outside. But when this
+brilliant culminating flash of the early school of Coleridge and Keats
+began to burn itself out, there was Tennyson, who might be called the
+conservative wing of the romantic movement, dominant as ever, and
+Browning, the militant wing, advanced from his mid-century obscurity into
+a flood-tide of appreciation which was to bear him far onward toward
+literary pre-eminence, placing him among the few greatest names in
+literature.
+
+The originality of the pre-Raphaelites grew out of their welding of
+romantic, classical, and mediaeval elements, tempered in each case by the
+special mental attitude of the poet.
+
+Rossetti and his brother artists, Millais and Holman Hunt, who founded the
+pre-Raphaelite brotherhood of painters, pledged themselves to the
+fundamental principle laid down by Rossetti in the little magazine they
+started called the _Germ_. This new creed was simple enough and ran: "The
+endeavor held in view throughout the writings on art will be to
+encourage and enforce an entire adherence to the simplicity of Nature."
+
+In their interpretation and development of this simple principle, artists
+and the poets who joined them differentiated from one another often to a
+wide extent. In Rossetti, it becomes an adoration of the beauty of woman
+expressed in ultra-sensuous though not in sensual imagery, combined with
+an atmosphere of religious wonder such as one finds in mediaeval poets, of
+which "The Blessed Damozel" stands as a typical example. In it, as one
+appreciator has said, all the qualities of Rossetti's poetry are found.
+"He speaks alternately like a seer and an artist; one who is now bewitched
+with the vision of beauty, and now is caught up into Paradise, where he
+hears unutterable things. To him the spiritual world is an intense
+reality. He hears the voices, he sees the presences of the supernatural.
+As he mourns beside the river of his sorrow, like Ezekiel, he has his
+visions of winged and wheeling glory, and leaning over the ramparts of the
+world his gaze is fixed on the uncovered mysteries of a world to come.
+There is no poet to whom the supernatural has been so much alive.
+Religious doubt he seems never to have felt. But the temper of religious
+wonder, the old, childlike, monkish attitude of awe and faith in the
+presence of the unseen, is never absent in him. The artistic force of his
+temperament drives him to the worship of beauty; the poetic and religious
+forces to the adoration of mystery."
+
+To Swinburne the simplicity of nature included the utmost lengths to which
+eroticism could go. Upon this ground he has been severely censured and he
+has had an unfortunate influence upon scores and scores of younger writers
+who have seemed to think that the province of the poet is to decry the
+existence of sincere affection, and who in their turn have exercised
+actual mischief in lowering social standards.
+
+This is not all of Swinburne, however. His superb metrical power is his
+chief contribution to the originality of this group, and when he developed
+away from his nauseating eroticism, he could charm as no one else with his
+delicious music, though it often be conspicuous for its lack of richness
+in thought.
+
+His fate has been somewhat different from that of most poets. When his
+"Atalanta in Calydon" was published it was received with enthusiasm, but
+the volumes overweighted with eroticism which followed caused a fierce
+controversy, and many have not even yet discovered that this was only one
+phase of Swinburne's art, and that, unfortunate as it is in many
+respects, it was a phase of the century's life which must find its
+expression in art if that life is to be completely given, and that it was
+a passing phase Swinburne himself proved in the development of other
+phases shown in his interest in current political situations, his
+enthusiasm for Italy and his later expressions of high moral ideals, as
+well as in a quasi-religious attitude of mind, not so far from that of
+Emerson, himself, in which strong emphasis is placed upon the importance
+of the individual, and upon the unity of God and man.
+
+There is moral courage and optimism in the face of doubt of a high order
+in the following lines:
+
+  --"Are ye not weary and faint not by the way
+  Seeing night by night devoured of day by day,
+    Seeing hour by hour consumed in sleepless fire?
+      Sleepless; and ye too, when shall ye, too sleep?
+  --We are weary in heart and head, in hands and feet,
+  And surely more than all things sleep were sweet,
+    Than all things save the inexorable desire
+      Which whoso knoweth shall neither faint nor weep.
+
+  "Is this so sweet that one were fain to follow?
+  Is this so sure when all men's hopes are hollow,
+     Even this your dream, that by much tribulation
+      Ye shall make whole flawed hearts, and bowed necks straight?
+  --Nay though our life were blind, our death were fruitless,
+  Not therefore were the whole world's high hope rootless;
+    But man to man, nation would turn to nation,
+      And the old life live, and the old great word be great."
+
+But Swinburne in his farthest reaches of pantheistic aspiration is to be
+seen in a poem like "Hertha":
+
+              "I am that which began;
+                Out of me the years roll;
+              Out of me God and man;
+                I am equal and whole;
+  God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul.
+
+              "The tree many-rooted
+                That swells to the sky
+              With frondage red-fruited
+                The life-tree am I;
+  In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves; ye shall live and not
+      die.
+
+              "But the Gods of your fashion
+                That take and that give,
+              In their pity and passion
+                That scourge and forgive,
+  They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they shall die
+      and not live.
+
+              "My own blood is what stanches
+                The wounds in my bark:
+              Stars caught in my branches
+                Make day of the dark,
+  And are worshipped as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their fires
+      as a spark."
+
+Morris's interpretation of pre-Raphaelite tenets took him into mediaeval
+legend and the classics for his subject matter. In his first volume, "The
+Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems," he came into competition with
+Tennyson, who was at the same time issuing his Arthurian legends. The
+polish of Tennyson's verse, as well as its symbolical meaning for the
+time, was more acceptable than the actual return to the nature of the
+fifteenth century, and this the first volume from a pre-Raphaelite was
+hardly noticed by the critics. Morris sulked within his literary tents for
+ten years before he again appeared, this time with "The Life and Death of
+Jason" (1867), which immediately became popular. Later came the "Earthly
+Paradise." These tales, in verse noble and simple, in style recalling the
+tales of Chaucer, yet with a charm all their own, in which the real men
+and women of Chaucer give place to types, have been the delight of those
+who like to find in poetry a dreamland of romance where they may enjoy
+themselves far from the problems and toils of everyday life. He differs
+from all the other poets of this group in his lack of religious hope. His
+mind was of the type that could not stand up against the undermining
+influences of the age: hence world-weariness and despair are the
+constantly recurring notes.
+
+[Illustration: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI]
+
+Mrs. Browning far outdistanced her husband in the early days in
+popularity. She pleased the people by her social enthusiasm, a
+characteristic more marked in her verse than in that of any of the poets
+mentioned. The critics have found many faults in her style, mainly those
+growing out of an impassioned nature which carried her at times beyond the
+realm of perfectly balanced art. But even an English critic of the
+conservatism of Edmund Gosse could at last admit that "In some of her
+lyrics and more rarely in her sonnets she rose to heights of passionate
+humanity which place her only just below the great poets of her country."
+
+Contemporary criticism of "Aurora Leigh," which was certainly a departure
+both in form and matter from the accepted standards, was, on the whole,
+just. _The Quarterly Review_ in 1862 said of it: "This 'Aurora Leigh' is a
+great poem. It is a wonder of art. It will live. No large audience will it
+have, but it will have audience; and that is more than most poems have. To
+those who know what poetry is and in what struggles it is born--how the
+great thoughts justify themselves--this work will be looked upon as one of
+the wonders of the age." Mrs. Browning resembles her husband in the fact
+that she does not fit into the main line of evolution of the romantic
+school, but is an individual manifestation of the romantic spirit, showing
+almost as great freedom from the trammels of accepted romanticism as
+Browning does.
+
+The writer of the century whose experience as a novelist almost paralleled
+that of Browning as poet was Meredith. Because of his psychological
+analysis and the so-called obscurity of his style, he waited many years
+for recognition and finally was accepted as one of the most remarkable
+novelists of the age. His poetry, showing similar tendencies, and
+overshadowed by his novels, has not yet emerged into the light of
+universal appreciation. One finds it even ignored altogether in the most
+recent books of English literature, yet he is the author of one of the
+most remarkable series of sonnets in the English language, "Modern Love,"
+presenting, as it does, a vivid picture of domestic decadence which forms
+a strange contrast to Rossetti's sonnets, "The House of Life," indicating
+how many and various have been the forces at work during the nineteenth
+century in the disintegrating and molding of social ideals. Meredith
+writes of "Hiding the Skeleton".
+
+  "At dinner she is hostess, I am host.
+  Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps
+  The topic over intellectual deeps
+  In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost.
+  With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball:
+  It is in truth a most contagious game;
+  _Hiding the Skeleton_ shall be its name.
+  Such play as this the devils might appall,
+  But here's the greater wonder; in that we,
+  Enamor'd of our acting and our wits,
+  Admire each other like true hypocrites.
+  Warm-lighted glances, Love's Ephemeral,
+  Shoot gayly o'er the dishes and the wine.
+  We waken envy of our happy lot.
+  Fast sweet, and golden, shows our marriage-knot.
+  Dear guests, you now have seen Love's corpse-light shine!"
+
+Rossetti writes "Lovesight":
+
+  "When do I see thee most, beloved one?
+    When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
+    Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
+  The worship of that Love through thee made known?
+  Or when, in the dusk hours (we two alone),
+    Close-kiss'd and eloquent of still replies
+    Thy twilight--hidden glimmering visage lies,
+  And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
+    O love, my love! if I no more should see
+    Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
+  Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,--
+    How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope,
+    The ground-whirl of the perish'd leaves of Hope,
+  The wind of Death's imperishable wing?"
+
+Browning's criticism of painting was evidently much influenced by the
+pre-Raphaelites. Their admiration for the painters who preceded Raphael,
+revealing as it did to them an art not satisfied with itself, but reaching
+after higher things, and earnestly seeking to interpret nature and human
+life, is echoed in his "Old Pictures in Florence," which was written but
+six years after Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti formed their brotherhood. In
+poetry, they did not eschew classical subjects, as Browning did for the
+most part, but they treated these subjects in a romantic spirit, and so
+removed them from the sort of strictures that Browning made upon the
+perfection of Greek art.
+
+From this summary of the chief lines of literary development in the
+nineteenth century it will be seen, not only what a marvelous age it has
+been for the flowering of individualism in literary invention, but how
+Browning has surpassed all the other poets of note in the wideness of his
+departure from accepted standards, and how helpless the earlier critics
+were in the face of this departure, because of their dependence always
+upon critical shibboleths--in other words, of principles not sufficiently
+universal--as their means of measuring a poet's greatness. Tennyson and
+the pre-Raphaelites won their popularity sooner among critics because
+they followed logically in the line of development inaugurated by the
+earlier poets, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, etc., whose poetry had already
+done some good work in breaking down the school of Dryden and Pope, though
+it succeeded only in erecting another standard not sufficiently universal
+to include Browning. The evolution of art forms, a principle so clearly
+understood, as we have shown by Browning, has never become a guiding one
+with critics, though Mr. Gosse in his "Modern English Literature" has
+expressed a wish that the principle of evolution might be adapted to
+criticism. He has evidently felt how hopeless is the task of appraising
+poets by the old individualistic method, which, as he says, has been in
+favor for at least a century. It possesses, he declares, considerable
+effectiveness in adroit hands, but is, after all, an adaptation of the old
+theory of the unalterable type, merely substituting for the one authority
+of the ancients an equal rigidity in a multitude of isolated modern
+instances. For this inflexible style of criticism he proposes that a
+scientific theory shall be adopted which shall enable us at once to take
+an intelligent pleasure in Pope and in Wordsworth, in Spenser and in
+Swift. He writes:
+
+"Herbert Spencer has, with infinite courage, opened the entire world of
+phenomena to the principles of evolution, but we seem slow to admit them
+into the little province of aesthetics. We cling to the individualist
+manner, to that intense eulogy which concentrates its rays on the
+particular object of notice and relegates all others to proportional
+obscurity. There are critics of considerable acumen and energy who seem to
+know no other mode of nourishing a talent or a taste than that which is
+pursued by the cultivators of gigantic gooseberries. They do their best to
+nip off all other buds, that the juices of the tree of fame may be
+concentrated on their favorite fruit. Such a plan may be convenient for
+the purposes of malevolence, and in earlier times our general ignorance of
+the principles of growth might well excuse it. But it is surely time that
+we should recognize only two criteria of literary judgment. The first is
+primitive, and merely clears the ground of rubbish; it is, Does the work
+before us, or the author, perform what he sets out to perform with a
+distinguished skill in the direction in which his powers are exercised? If
+not, he interests the higher criticism not at all; but if yes, then
+follows the second test: Where, in the vast and ever-shifting scheme of
+literary evolution, does he take his place, and in what relation does he
+stand, not to those who are least like him, but to those who are of his
+own kith and kin?"
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE MEREDITH]
+
+With such principles of criticism as this, the public would sooner be
+brought to an appreciation of all that is best worth while in literature,
+instead of being taken, as it too often is, upon a wrong scent to worship
+at the shrine of the Nokes and Stokes, who simply print blue and eat the
+turtles.
+
+If Mr. Gosse had himself been fully imbued with such principles would he
+have made the statement quoted in chapter two in regard to Browning's
+later books? And should we have such senseless criticism as a remark which
+has become popular lately, and which I believe emanated from a university
+in the South--namely, that Browning never said anything that Tennyson had
+not said better? As an illustration of this a recent critic may be quoted
+who is entirely scornful of the person who prefers Browning's
+
+  "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world"
+
+to Tennyson's
+
+  "And hear at times a sentinel
+    Who moves about from place to place,
+    And whispers to the worlds of space
+  In the deep night that all is well."
+
+One might reply to this that it is a matter of taste had not Courthope
+shown conclusively that Matthew Arnold's criterion of criticism--namely,
+that a taste which is born of culture is the only certain possession by
+which the critic can measure the beauty of a poet's line--is a fallacy.
+His argument is worth quoting:
+
+    "You have stated strongly one side of the truth, but you have ignored,
+    completely ignored, the other. You have asserted the claims of
+    individual liberty, and up to a certain point I agree with you. I do
+    not deny that spiritual liberty is founded on consciousness, and hence
+    the self-consciousness of the age is part of the problem we are
+    considering. I do not deny that the prevailing rage for novelty must
+    also be taken into account. Liberty, variety, novelty, are all
+    necessary to the development of Art. Without novelty there can be no
+    invention, without variety there can be no character, without liberty
+    there can be no life. Life, character, invention, these are of the
+    essence of Poetry. But while you have defended with energy the freedom
+    of the Individual, you have said nothing of the authority of society.
+    And yet the conviction of the existence of this authority is a belief
+    perhaps even more firmly founded in the human mind than the sentiment
+    as to the rights of individual liberty....
+
+    The great majority of the professors of poetry, however various their
+    opinions, however opposite their tastes, have felt sure that there was
+    in taste, as in science, a theory of false and true; in art, as in
+    conduct, a rule of right and wrong. And even among those who have
+    asserted most strongly the inward and relative nature of poetry, do
+    you think there was one so completely a skeptic as to imagine that he
+    was the sole proprietor of the perception he sought to embody in
+    words; one who doubted his power, by means of accepted symbols, to
+    communicate to his audience his own ideas and feelings about external
+    things? Yet until some man shall have been found bold enough to defend
+    a thesis so preposterous, we must continue to believe that there is a
+    positive standard, by which those at least who speak a common language
+    may reason about questions of taste."
+
+Armed with this gracious permission on the part of a professor of poetry,
+we may venture to reason a little upon the foregoing quotations from
+Tennyson and Browning to the effect that the person of really good taste
+might like each of them in its place. While Tennyson's mystical quatrain
+is beautiful and quite appropriate in such a poem as "In Memoriam," it
+would not be in the least appropriate from the lips of a little
+silk-winding girl as she wanders through the streets of Asolo on a sunny
+morning singing her little songs. She is certainly a more lifelike child
+speaking Browningese, as she has often been criticised for doing, than she
+would be if upon this occasion she spoke in a Tennysonian manner. That her
+song has touched the hearts of the twentieth century, if it was not
+altogether appreciated in the nineteenth, is proved by the fact that it is
+one of the most popular songs of the day as set by Mrs. H. H. A. Beach,
+and that the line is heard upon the lips of people to-day who do not even
+know whose it is, and herein lies the ultimate test of greatness.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+CLASSIC SURVIVALS
+
+
+Before passing in review Browning's treatment of classical subjects as
+compared with the other great poets of the nineteenth century, it will be
+interesting to take a glimpse at his choice of subject-matter in general.
+
+To compare Browning's choice of subject-matter with that of other English
+poets is to strike at the very root of his position in the chain of
+literary development. Subject-matter is by no means simple in its nature,
+but as a musical sound is composed of vibrations within vibrations, so it
+is made up of the complex relations of body and spirit--the mere external
+facts of the story are blended with such philosophical undercurrent, or
+dramatic _motif_, or unfolding of the hidden springs of action as the poet
+is able to insinuate into it.
+
+However far back one penetrates in the history of poetry, poets will be
+found depending largely upon previous sources, rather than upon their own
+creative genius, for the body of their subject-matter, until the
+question presents itself with considerable force as to who could have been
+the mysterious first poet who supplied plots to the rest of mankind.
+Conjecture is obliged to play a part here, as it does wherever human
+origins are in question. Doubtless, this first poet was no separate
+individual, but simply the elements man and nature, through whose action
+and reaction upon each other grew up story-forms, evidently compounded of
+human customs, and observed natural phenomena such as those we find in the
+great Hindu, Greek, and Teutonic classics, and which thus crystallized
+became great well-springs of inspiration for future generations of poets.
+
+Each new poet, however, who is worthy of the name, sets up his own
+particular interplay with man and nature; and however much he may be
+indebted for his inspiration to past products of this universal law of
+action and reaction, he is bound to use them or interpret them in a manner
+colored by his own personal and peculiar relations with the universe.
+
+In so doing he supplies the more important spiritual side of
+subject-matter and becomes in very truth the poet or maker, to that extent
+at least which Browning himself lays down as the province of art--namely,
+to arrange,
+
+  "Dissociate, redistribute, interchange
+  Part with part: lengthen, broaden
+  ... simply what lay loose
+  At first lies firmly after, what design
+  Was faintly traced in hesitating line
+  Once on a time grows firmly resolute
+  Henceforth and evermore."
+
+Sometimes the poet's power of arranging and redistributing and
+interchanging carries him upward into the realm of ideas alone, among
+which his imagination plays in absolute freedom; he throws over the
+results of man's past dallyings with Nature and makes his own terms with
+her, and the result is an approach to absolute creation.
+
+Except in the case of lyric poetry the instances where there have been no
+suggestions as to subject-matter are rare in comparison with those where
+the subject-matter has been derived from some source.
+
+Look, for instance, at the father of English poetry, Chaucer, how he
+ransacked French, Italian and Latin literature for his subject-matter,
+most conscientiously carrying out his own saying, that
+
+  "Out of olde feldys as men sey
+    Comyth all this newe corn from yere to yere,
+  And out of olde books in good fey
+    Cometh all this new science that men alere."
+
+How external a way he had of working over old materials, especially in his
+earlier work, is well illustrated in "The Parliament of Fowls," which he
+opens by relating the dream of Scipio, originally contained in Cicero's
+treatise on the "Republic," and preserved by Macrobius. This dream, which
+tells how Africanus appears to Scipio, and carries him up among the stars
+of the night, shows him Carthage, and prophesies to him of his future
+greatness, tells him of the blissful immortal life that is in store for
+those who have served their country, points out to him the brilliant
+celestial fires, and how insignificant the earth is in comparison with
+them, and opens his ears to the wondrous harmony of the spheres--this
+dream is as far removed from the main argument of the poem as anything
+well could be a contest between three falcons for the hand of a formel.
+The bringing together of such diverse elements presents no difficulties to
+the childlike stage of literary development that depends upon surface
+analogies for the linking together of its thoughts. Just as talking about
+his ancestor, the great Scipio Africanus, with the old King Masinissa
+caused Scipio to dream of him, so reading about this dream caused Chaucer,
+who has to close his book and go to bed for want of a light, to dream of
+Scipio Africanus also, who "was come and stood right at his bedis syde."
+
+Africanus then plays the part of conductor to Chaucer in a manner
+suggestive not only of his relations to Scipio, but of Virgil's relation
+to Dante, and brings him to the great gateway and through it into the
+garden of love. The description is of the temple of Venus in Boccaccio's
+"La Teseide." There Nature and the "Fowls" are introduced and described,
+and at last the point is reached. Nature proclaims that it is St.
+Valentine's day, and all the fowls may choose them mates. The royal falcon
+is given first choice, and chooses the lovely formel that sits upon
+Nature's hand. Two other ardent falcons declare their devotion to the same
+fowl, and Nature, when the formel declares that she will serve neither
+Venus nor Cupid and asks a respite for a year, decides that the three
+shall serve their lady another year--a pretty allegory supposed to refer
+to the wooing of Blanche of Lancaster by John of Gaunt.
+
+The main argument of this poem, when it finally is reached by artificially
+welding together rich links borrowed from other poets, is one of the few
+examples in Chaucer of subject-matter derived direct from a real event,
+but the putting of it in an allegorical form at once lays him under
+obligations to his poetic predecessors, not only on Anglo-Saxon soil, but
+in France and Italy.
+
+His most important contributions as an inventor are, of course, his
+descriptions of the Canterbury Pilgrims, which are the pure outcome of a
+keen observation of men and women at first hand. So lifelike are they that
+in them he has made the England of the fourteenth century live again. But
+how small a proportion of the bulk of the "Canterbury Tales" is contained
+in these glimpses of English life and manners. It is but the framework
+upon which luxuriate vines of fancy transplanted from many another garden,
+and even in its place resembling, if not borrowed from, Boccaccio.
+
+The thoroughly human instincts of the poet assert themselves, however, in
+the choice of the tales which he puts into the mouths of his pilgrims. He
+allows a place to the crudities and even the vulgarities of common stories
+as well as to culture-lore. The magic of the East, the love tales of
+Italy, the wisdom of philosophers, the common stories of the people, all
+give up their wealth to his gentle touch. With a keen sense of propriety
+he, with few exceptions, gives each one of his pilgrims a tale suited in
+its general tendency to the character of its narrator, and in the critical
+chatter of the pilgrims about the tales, reflects not only his own tastes,
+but that of the times, the opinions expressed frequently being most
+uncomplimentary in their tenor.
+
+In fine, the life of reality and the life of books is spread out before
+Chaucer, and his observation of both is keen and interested; and this it
+is which makes him much more than the "great translator" that Eustace Les
+Champs called him, and settles the nature of the "subtle thing" called
+spirit contributed by the individuality of the poet to his subject-matter.
+He brings everything within the reach of human sympathy, because his way
+of putting a story into his own words is sympathetic. He was a combination
+of the story-teller, the scholar, the poet, and the critic. As a scholar
+he brings in learned allusions that are entirely extraneous to the action
+in hand; as the story-teller, he takes delight in the tales that both the
+poet and the people have told; as the poet, his imagination dresses up a
+story with a fresh environment, often anachronous, and sometimes he alters
+the moral tone of the characters. Cressida is an interesting example of
+this. But instead of the characters suggesting by their own action and
+speech all the needed moral, Chaucer himself appears ever at hand to
+analyze and criticise and moralize, though he does it so delightfully that
+one hesitates to call him didactic. The result of all this is that the
+external form and the underlying essence of his subject-matter are not
+completely fused. We often see a sort of guileless working of the
+machinery of art, yet it is true, no doubt, though perhaps not to the
+extent insisted on by Morley, that he has something of the Shakespearian
+quality which enables him to show men as they really are, "wholly
+developed as if from within, not as described from without by an imperfect
+and prejudiced observer."
+
+In his great work, Spenser is no less dependent upon sources for his
+inspiration, but there is a marked difference in his use of them. Although
+his range of observation is much narrower than Chaucer's, hardly extending
+at all into the realm of actual human effort, yet he makes an advance in
+so far as his powers of redistribution are much greater than Chaucer's.
+
+The various knights of the "Fairy Queen" and their exploits are not
+modeled directly upon any previous stories, but they are made up of
+incidents similar to those found scattered all through classic lore; and
+as his inspirations were drawn in most cases directly from the
+fountain-head of story in the Greek writers--instead of as they filtered
+through the Latin, Italian, and French, with the inevitable accretions
+that result from migrations,--and from the comparatively unalloyed
+Arthurian legends, there is a clearer reflection in them of the cosmic
+elements that shine through both the Greek and Arthurian originals than is
+found in Chaucer.
+
+Although Spenser was certainly unaware of any such modern refinement of
+the mythologist as a solar myth, yet the "Fairy Queen" forms a curious and
+interesting study on account of the survivals everywhere evident of solar
+characteristics in his characters and plots. Indeed it could hardly be
+otherwise, considering his intention, and his method of carrying it out,
+which he, himself, explains in his quaint letter to Sir Walter
+Raleigh--namely, "to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and
+gentle discipline." He goes on:
+
+    "I close the history of King Arthur as most fit for the excellency of
+    his person, being made famous by many men's former works, and also
+    further from danger and envy of suspicion of present time. In which I
+    have followed all the antique poets historical; first Homer, who in
+    the person of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governor
+    and a virtuous man, the one in his 'Iliad,' the other in his
+    'Odyssey'; then Virgil, whose like intention was to do in the person
+    of AEneas: After him, Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando, and
+    lately Tasso dissevered them again, and formed both parts in two
+    persons, the part which they in Philosophy call Ethice or virtues of a
+    private man, colored in his Rinaldo, the other, named Politice, in his
+    Godfieldo. By example of which excellent poets, I labor to portray in
+    Arthur before he was King, the image of a brave Knight perfected in
+    the twelve private moral virtues as Aristotle hath devised, the which
+    is the purpose of these first twelve books."
+
+In the fashioning of his knight he took Arthur, a hero whose life as it
+appears in the early romances is inextricably mingled with solar elements,
+and has built up his virtues upon other ancient solar heroes. Here are all
+the paraphernalia of solar mythology: invincible knights with marvelous
+weapons, brazen castles guarded by dragons, marriage with a beautiful
+maiden and parting from the bride to engage in new quests, an enchantress
+who turns men into animals, even the outcast child; but none of the
+incidents appear intact. It is as if there had been a great explosion in
+the ancient land of romance and that in the mending up of things the
+separate pieces are all recognizable, although all joined together in a
+different pattern, while under all is the allegory. A gentle knight is
+no longer a solar hero as set forth by Max Mueller or Cox, but Holiness;
+his invincible armor is not the all-powerful rays of the sun, but truth;
+the enchantress not night casting a spell over mortals, but sensuous
+pleasure entangling them.
+
+These two poets, Chaucer and Spenser, are prototypes of two poet types of
+two poetical tendencies that have gone on developing side by side in
+English literature: Chaucer, democratic, interested supremely in the
+personalities of men and women, portraying the real, and Spenser,
+aristocratic, interested in imaging forth an ideal of manhood, choosing
+his subject-matter from sources that will lend themselves to such a
+purpose; Chaucer drawing his lessons out of the real actions of humanity;
+Spenser framing his story so that it will illustrate the moral he wishes
+to inculcate.
+
+Shakespeare, of course, ranges himself in line with Chaucer. His interest
+centered on character, and wherever a story capable of character
+development presented itself, that he chose, altered it in outline
+comparatively little, and when he did so it was in order to carry forward
+the dramatic _motif_ which he infused into his subject. The dramatic
+form in which he wrote furnished him a better medium for reaching a
+complete welding together of the external and spiritual side of his
+subject-matter. Where Chaucer hinted at the possibilities of an artistic
+development of character that would cause the events of the story to
+appear as the inevitable outcome of the hidden springs of action,
+Shakespeare accomplished it, and peopled the world of imagination with
+group after group of living, acting characters.
+
+In the nineteenth century Tennyson and Browning have represented, broadly
+speaking, these two tendencies. As with Spenser, the classics and the
+Arthurian legends have been the sources from which Tennyson has drawn most
+largely; but although a philosophical undercurrent is this poet's
+spiritual addition to the subject-matter, his method of putting his soul
+inside his work is very different from Spenser's. He does not tear the old
+myths to pieces and join them together again after a pattern of his own to
+fit his allegorical situation, but keeps the events of his stories almost
+unchanged, in this particular resembling Chaucer and Shakespeare,
+and--except in a few instances, such as Tithonus and Lucretius, where the
+classic spirit of the originals is preserved--he infuses in his subject a
+vein of philosophy, illustrating those modern tendencies of English
+thought of which Tennyson, himself, was the exemplar. Even when inventing
+subjects, founded upon the experiences of everyday life, he so manipulates
+the story as to make it illustrate some of his favorite moral maxims. His
+characters do not act from motives which are the inherent necessities of
+their natures, but they act in accordance with Tennyson's preconceived
+notions of how they ought to act. He manipulates the elements of character
+to suit his own view of development, just as Spenser manipulated the
+elements of the story to suit his own allegorical purpose.
+
+Browning is the nineteenth-century heir of Chaucer; but it is doubtful
+whether Chaucer would recognize his own offspring, so remarkable has the
+development been in those five centuries. With Chaucer's keen interest in
+human nature deepened to a profound insight into the very soul of
+humanity, and the added wealth of these centuries of human history,
+Browning not only had a far wider range of choice in subject-matter, but
+he was enabled to instil into it greater intellectual and emotional
+complexities.
+
+Rarely has he treated any subject that has already been treated poetically
+unless we except the transcripts from the classics soon to be
+considered. Wherever he saw an interesting historical personage,
+interesting, not on account of his brilliant achievements in the eyes of
+the world, but on account of potentialities of character, such a one he
+has set before us to reveal himself. There are between twenty and thirty
+portraits of this nature in his work, chosen from all sorts and conditions
+of men--men who stand for some phase of growth in human thought; and
+always in developing a personality he gives the kernel of truth upon which
+their peculiar point of view is based. Thus, among the musical poems, Abt
+Vogler speaks for the intuitionalist--he who is blessed by a glimpse of
+the absolute truth. Charles Avison, on the other hand, is the philosopher
+of the relative in music and the arts generally. Among the art poems, Fra
+Lippo Lippi is the apostle of beauty in realism, Andrea del Sarto the
+attainer of perfection in form. In the religious poems the Jewish
+standpoint is illustrated in "Saul" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra," the Christian in
+the portrait of John in "The Death in the Desert"; the empirical reasoner
+in "Paracelsus."
+
+This is only one of Browning's methods in the choice and use of
+subject-matter. The characters and incidents in his stories are
+frequently the result of pure invention, but he sets them in an
+environment recreated from history, developing their individualities in
+harmony with the environment, thus giving at one stroke the spirit of the
+time and the individual qualities of special representatives of the time.
+Examples of this are: "My Last Duchess," where the Duke is an entirely
+imaginary person and the particular incident is invented, but he is made
+to act and talk in a way perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the
+time--mediaeval Italy. "Hugues of Saxe-Gotha" is another being of
+Browning's fancy, who yet represents to perfection the spirit of the old
+fugue writers. "Luria," "The Soul's Tragedy," "In a Balcony," all
+represent the same method.
+
+Another plan pursued by the poet is either to invent or borrow a
+historical personage into whose mouth he puts the defence of some course
+of action or ethical standard that may or may not be founded upon the
+highest ideals. Sludge, the hero of "Fifine at the Fair," Bishop Blougram,
+Hohenstiel-Schwangau, range themselves in this group.
+
+There are comparatively few cases where he has taken a complete story and
+developed its spiritual possibilities without much change in external
+detail, but how adequate his art was to such ends, "The Ring and the
+Book," "Inn Album," "Two Poets of Croisic," "Red Cotton Nightcap Country,"
+the historical dramas of "Strafford," and "King Victor and King Charles"
+fully prove, including, as they do, some of his finest masterpieces.
+
+History and story have furnished many of the incidents which he has worked
+up in his dramatic lyrics and romances like "Clive," "Herve Riel,"
+"Donald," etc. There remains, however, a large number of poems containing
+some of Browning's loveliest work in which the subject-matter is, as far
+as we know, the creation of pure, unadulterated fancy. "A Blot in the
+'Scutcheon," "In a Balcony," "Colombe's Birthday," "Childe Roland," "James
+Lee's Wife" are some of them. Even in this rapid survey of the field the
+fact is patent that Browning's range of subject-matter is infinitely wider
+and his method of developing it far more varied than has been that of any
+other English poet. He seems the first to have completely shaken himself
+free from the trammels of classic or mediaeval literature. There are no
+echoes of Arthur and his Knights in his poetry, the shadows of the Greek
+gods and goddesses exert no spell--except in the few instances when he
+deliberately chose a Greek subject.
+
+The fact that Browning was so free from classical influence in the great
+body of his work as compared with the other chief poets of the nineteenth
+century gives an especial interest to those poems in which he chose
+classical themes for his subjects. There are not more than ten all told,
+and one of these is a translation, yet they represent some of his finest
+and most original work, for Browning could not touch a classical theme
+without infusing into it that grasp and insight peculiar to his own
+genius.
+
+His first and most conventionally classical poem is the fragment in "Men
+and Women," "Artemis Prologizes," written in 1842. It was to have been the
+introduction to a long poem telling of the mad love of Hippolytus for a
+nymph of Artemis, after that goddess had brought about his resuscitation.
+It has been suggested by Mr. Boynton in an interesting paper that Browning
+shows traces of the influence of Landor in his poetry. This fragment
+certainly furnishes argument for this opinion, though it has a strength of
+diction along with its Greek severity and terseness of style which leads
+to the conclusion that the influence came from the fountain head of
+Greek poetry itself rather than through the lesser muse of this
+nineteenth-century Greek.
+
+The poem is said to have been begun on a sick-bed and when the poet
+recovered he had forgotten or lost interest in his plans. This is to be
+regretted for if he had continued as he began, the poem would have stood
+unique in his work as a true survival of Greek subject wedded with
+classical form and style, and would certainly have challenged comparison
+with the best work done in this field by Landor or Swinburne, who tell
+over the classical stories or even invent new episodes, but, when all is
+said, do not write as if they were actually themselves Greeks.
+
+There is no other instance in Browning of such a survival. In his other
+poems on Greek subjects it is Browning bringing Greek life to our ken with
+wonderful distinctness, but doing it according to his own accustomed
+poetical methods, or, as in "Ixion," a Greek story has been used as a
+symbol for the inculcating of a philosophy which is largely Browning's
+own.
+
+In spite of the fact that he has turned to Greece so seldom for
+inspiration, his Greek poems range from such stirring pictures of Greek
+life and feeling as one gets in the splendid dramatic idyl
+"Pheidippides," based on a historical incident, through the imaginary
+"Cleon," in which is found the sublimated essence of Greek philosophical
+thought at the time of Christ--thought, weary of law and beauty, longing
+for a fresh inspiration, knowing not what, and unable to perceive it in
+the new ideal of love being taught by the Christians--to "Aristophanes'
+Apology," in which the Athens of his day, with its literary and political
+factions, is presented with a force and analysis which place it second
+only to "The Ring and the Book."
+
+This poem taken, with Balaustion, gives the reader not only a
+comprehensive view of the historical atmosphere of the time but indirectly
+shows the poet's own attitude toward the literary war between Euripides
+and Aristophanes. So different are Browning's Greek poems from all other
+poems upon classical subjects that it will be interesting to dwell upon
+the most important of them at greater length than has been deemed
+necessary in the case of the more widely known and read of the poems.
+
+"Cleon" links itself with the nineteenth century, because of its dealing
+with the problem of immortality, a problem which has been ever present in
+the mind of the century. Cleon has, beside that type of synthetic mind
+which belongs to a ripe phase of civilization. Though he is a Greek and a
+pagan, he stretches hands across the centuries to men of the type of
+Morris or Matthew Arnold. He is the latest child of his own time, the heir
+of all the ages during which Greece had developed its aesthetic perfection,
+discovered the inadequacy of its established religion, come through its
+philosophers and poets to a perception of the immortality of the soul, and
+sunk again to a skepticism which had no vision of personal immortality at
+least, though among the stoics there were some who believed in an
+absorption into divine being. Cleon would fain believe in personal
+immortality but cannot, and, like Matthew Arnold, believes in facing death
+imperturbably.
+
+In "Balaustion's Adventure" a historical tradition is used as the central
+episode of the poem, but life and romance are given to it by the creation
+of the heroine, Balaustion, a young Greek woman whose fascinating
+personality dominates the whole poem. She was a Rhodian, else her freedom
+of action and speech might seem too modern, but among the islands of
+Greece, at least at the time of Euripides, there still survived that
+attitude toward woman which we see reflected in the Homeric epics. Away
+from Athens, too, Euripides was a power; hence his defence is put into the
+mouth of one not an Athenian. She had saved a shipload of Athenian
+sympathizers by reciting Euripides when they were in danger from the
+hostile Syracusans.
+
+[Illustration: EURIPIDES]
+
+Besides the romantic touch which is given the story by the creation of the
+lyric girl, there is an especial fitness in making the enthusiastic
+devotee of this poet a woman, for no one among the ancients has so fully
+and sympathetically portrayed woman in all her human possibilities of
+goodness and badness as Euripides, yet he has been called a
+woman-hater--because some of his men have railed against women--but one
+Alkestis is enough to offset any dramatic utterances of his men about
+women. The poet's attitude should be looked for in his power of portraying
+women of fine traits, not in any opinions expressed by his men.
+Furthermore, Browning had before him a model of Balaustion in her
+enthusiasm for Euripides, in Mrs. Browning. These circumstances are
+certainly sufficient to prove the appropriateness of making a Rhodian girl
+the defender of Euripides.
+
+There is nothing more delicious in Browning than Balaustion's relation of
+"Alkestis," as she had seen it acted, to her three friends. Her woman's
+comment and criticisms combine a Browning's penetration of the fine points
+in the play with a girl's idealism. Such a combination of masculine
+intellectualism and feminine charm has been known in women of all
+centuries. As the translation of the beautiful play of "Alkestis"
+proceeds, Balaustion interprets its art and moral, defending her favorite
+poet, not with the ponderousness of a grave critic weighing the influences
+which may have molded his genius, or calculating the pros and cons of his
+style, but with the swift appreciation of a mind and spirit full of the
+ardor of sympathy. Moreover, her talk of the play being a recollection of
+how it appeared to her as she saw it acted, the mere text is constantly
+enlarged upon and made vital with flashing glimpses of the action, as, for
+example, in the passage just after the funeral of Alkestis:
+
+  "So, to the struggle off strode Herakles,
+  When silence closed behind the lion-garb,
+  Back came our dull fact settling in its place,
+  Though heartiness and passion half-dispersed
+  The inevitable fate. And presently
+  In came the mourners from the funeral,
+  One after one, until we hoped the last
+  Would be Alkestis, and so end our dream.
+  Could they have really left Alkestis lone
+  I' the wayside sepulchre! Home, all save she!
+  And when Admetos felt that it was so,
+  By the stand-still: when he lifted head and face
+  From the two hiding hands and peplos' fold,
+  And looked forth, knew the palace, knew the hills,
+  Knew the plains, knew the friendly frequence there,
+  And no Alkestis any more again,
+  Why, the whole woe billow-like broke on him."
+
+Again, her criticism of Admetos gives at once the natural feeling of a
+girl who could not be satisfied with what seemed to her his selfish
+action, and Browning's feeling that Euripides saw its selfishness just as
+surely as Balaustion, despite the fact that it was in keeping, as numerous
+critics declare, with the customs of the age, and would not by any of his
+contemporaries be regarded as selfish on his part:
+
+  "So he stood sobbing: nowise insincere,
+  But somehow child-like, like his children, like
+  Childishness the world over. What was new
+  In this announcement that his wife must die?
+  What particle of pain beyond the pact
+  He made with his eyes wide open, long ago--
+  Made and was, if not glad, content to make?
+  Now that the sorrow, he had called for, came,
+  He sorrowed to the height: none heard him say,
+  However, what would seem so pertinent,
+  'To keep this pact, I find surpass my power;
+  Rescind it, Moirai! Give me back her life,
+  And take the life I kept by base exchange!
+  Or, failing that, here stands your laughing-stock
+  Fooled by you, worthy just the fate o' the fool
+  Who makes a pother to escape the best
+  And gain the worst you wiser Powers allot!'
+  No, not one word of this; nor did his wife
+  Despite the sobbing, and the silence soon
+  To follow, judge so much was in his thought--
+  Fancy that, should the Moirai acquiesce,
+  He would relinquish life nor let her die.
+  The man was like some merchant who in storm,
+  Throws the freight over to redeem the ship;
+  No question, saving both were better still,
+  As it was,--why, he sorrowed, which sufficed.
+  So, all she seemed to notice in his speech
+  Was what concerned her children."
+
+Among modern critics who take the conventional ground in regard to Admetos
+may be cited Churton Collins, whose opinion is, of course, weighty. He
+writes:
+
+    "Alcestis would be considered fortunate for having had an opportunity
+    of displaying so conspicuously the fidelity to a wife's first and
+    capital duty. Had Admetus prevented such a sacrifice he would have
+    robbed Alcestis of an honor which every nobly ambitious woman in
+    Hellas would have coveted. This is so much taken for granted by the
+    poet that all that he lays stress on in the drama is the virtue
+    rewarded by the return of Alcestis to life, the virtue characteristic
+    of Admetus, the virtue of hospitality; to this duty in all the agony
+    of his sorrow Admetus had been nobly true, and as a reward for what he
+    had thus earned, the wife who had been equally true to woman's
+    obligations was restored all-glorified to home and children and mutual
+    love."
+
+Most readers, however, will find it difficult to put themselves into the
+appropriate Greek frame of mind, and will sympathize with Browning's
+supposition that after all Euripides had transcended current ideas on the
+subject and deliberately intended to convey such an interpretation of the
+character of Admetos as Balaustion gives.
+
+Balaustion shows her penetration again in her appreciation of Herakles. He
+distinguishes clearly between evil that is inherent in the nature as the
+selfishness of Admetos, and evil which is more or less external, growing
+out of conditions incident to the time rather than from any real trait of
+nature. Herakles' delight in the hospitality accorded him, his drinking
+and feasting in the interim of his labors, did not touch the genuine,
+large-hearted helpfulness of the demigod, who became sober the moment he
+learned there was sorrow in the house and need of his aid.
+
+In her proposed version of the story, Balaustion is surely the romantic
+girl, who would have her hero a hero indeed and in every way the equal of
+his spouse. Yet if we delve below this romanticism of Balaustion we shall
+find the poet's own belief in the almost omniscient power of human love
+the basis of the relation between Admetos and Alkestis.
+
+The soul of Alkestis in one look entered into that of Admetos; she died,
+but he is entirely guiltless of agreeing to her death. Alkestis herself
+had made the pact with Apollo to die for her husband. He, when he learns
+it, refuses to accept the sacrifice, and unable to persuade him that his
+duty to humanity demands that he accept it, Alkestis asks him to look at
+her. Then her soul enters his, but when she goes to Hades and demands to
+become a ghost, the Queen of Hades replies:
+
+  "Hence, thou deceiver! This is not to die,
+  If, by the very death which mocks me now,
+  The life, that's left behind and past my power,
+  Is formidably doubled--Say, there fight
+  Two athletes, side by side, each athlete armed
+  With only half the weapons, and no more,
+  Adequate to a contest with their foes.
+  If one of these should fling helm, sword and shield
+  To fellow--shieldless, swordless, helmless late--
+  And so leap naked o'er the barrier, leave
+  A combatant equipped from head to heel,
+  Yet cry to the other side, 'Receive a friend
+  Who fights no longer!' 'Back, friend, to the fray!'
+  Would be the prompt rebuff; I echo it.
+  Two souls in one were formidable odds:
+  Admetos must not be himself and thou!
+
+  "And so, before the embrace relaxed a whit,
+  The lost eyes opened, still beneath the look;
+  And lo, Alkestis was alive again,
+  And of Admetos' rapture who shall speak?"
+
+How unique a treatment of a classical subject this poem is, is
+self-evident. Not content with making a superb translation of the play,
+remarkable both for its literalness and for its poetic beauty, the poet
+has dared to present that translation indirectly through the mouth of
+another speaker, and to incorporate with it a running commentary of
+criticism in blank verse. Still more daring was it to make play and
+criticism an episode in a dramatic monologue in which we learn not only
+the story of the rescue of the shipload of Athenian sympathizers, but the
+story of Balaustion's love. Along with all this complexity of interest
+there is still room for a lifelike portrayal of Balaustion herself, one of
+the loveliest conceptions of womanhood in literature.
+
+To reiterate what I have upon another occasion expressed in regard to her,
+she is a girl about whom the fancy loves to cling--she is so joyous, so
+brave, and so beautiful, and possessed of so rare a mind scintillating
+with wit, wisdom and critical insight, not Browning's own mind either
+except in so far as his sympathies were with Euripides. Her ardor for
+purity and perfection is perhaps peculiarly feminine. It is quite
+different from that of the mind tormented by the problem of evil and
+taking refuge in a partisanship of evil as a force which works for good
+and without which the world would be a waste of insipidity. Her suggested
+version of the Alkestis story converts Admetos into as much of a saint as
+Alkestis, and makes an exquisite and soul-stirring romance of their
+perfect union, though it must be admitted that it would do away with all
+the intensity and dramatic force of the play as it is presented by
+Euripides. Like the angels who rejoice more over one sinner returned than
+over the ninety and nine that did not go astray, an artist prefers the
+contrast and movement of a sinning and regenerated Admetos to an Admetos
+more suited from the first to be the consort of Alkestis. This is the
+touch, however, which preserves Balaustion's feminine charm and makes her
+truly her own self--an ardent soul very far from being simply Browning's
+mouthpiece.
+
+"Aristophanes' Apology" is a still more remarkable play in its complexity.
+Again, Balaustion is the speaker, and Browning has set himself the task in
+this monologue of relating the fall of Athens, of presenting the
+personality of Aristophanes, of defending Euripides, a translation of
+whose play, "Herakles," is included, and incidentally sketching the
+history of Greek comedy, all through the mouth of the one speaker,
+Balaustion. Not until one has grasped the law by which the poet has
+accomplished this, and has moreover freshly in his mind the facts of Greek
+history at the time of Athens' fall, and Greek literature, especially the
+plays of Aristophanes and Euripides, can the poem be thoroughly enjoyed.
+
+In the very first line the suggestion of the scene setting is given, and
+such suggestions occur from time to time all through the poem. It should
+be observed that they are never brought in for themselves alone, but are
+always used in connection with some mood of Balaustion's or as imagery in
+relation to some thought. While the reader is thus kept conscious of the
+background of wind and wave, as Balaustion and her husband voyage toward
+Rhodes, it is not until the end of the poem that we learn with a pleasant
+surprise that the boat on which they are sailing is the same one saved
+once by Balaustion when she recited Euripides' "sweetest, saddest song."
+Thus there is a dramatic denouement in connection with the scene setting.
+
+Through the expression of a mood of despair on the part of Balaustion at
+the opening of the poem the reader is put in possession not only of the
+scene setting but of the occasion of the voyage, which is the overthrow
+of Athens. From the mood of despair Balaustion passes to one in which she
+describes how she could better have borne to see Athens perish. This
+carries her on to a more hopeful frame of mind, in which she can foresee
+the spiritual influence of Athens persisting. The peace of mind ensuing
+upon this consideration makes it possible for her calmly to survey the
+events connected with its downfall, among which the picturesque episode of
+the dancing of the flute girls to the demolition of the walls of the
+Piraeus is conspicuous. She then sees the vision of the immortal Athens
+while Sparta the victorious in arms will die. Then comes a mood in which
+she declares it will be better to face the grief than to brood over it,
+which leads to her proposing to Euthukles that they treat the fall of
+Athens as a tragic theme, as the poet might do, and enact it on the
+voyage. Then grief over the recent events takes possession of her again,
+and now with the feminine privilege of changing her mind, she thinks it
+would be better to rehearse an event which happened to herself a year ago
+as a prologue. Speaking of adventures causes her very naturally to drop
+into reminiscences about her first adventure, when she recited
+Euripides and met the man who was to become her husband.
+
+[Illustration: ARISTOPHANES]
+
+Thus, through this perfectly natural transition from one mood to another,
+Balaustion leads up to the real subject-matter of the poem, Aristophanes'
+defence of himself, which, however, is preceded by an account of the
+effect of the death of Euripides upon the Athenians as witnessed by
+Euthukles, his death being the occasion of Aristophanes' call on
+Balaustion. What she calls the prologue is really the main theme of the
+poem, while all her talk up to this point is truly the prologue. The
+actual account of the fall of Athens does not come until the conclusion,
+and is related in comparatively few words.
+
+What seems, then, to be the chief theme of the poem with its setting of
+wind and wave and bark bears somewhat the same relation to the real theme
+as incidental music does to a play. Upon first thoughts it may seem like a
+clumsy contrivance for introducing Aristophanes upon the scene, but in the
+end it will be perceived, I think, that it serves the artistic purpose of
+placing Aristophanes in proper perspective. Balaustion with her
+exquisitely human moods and progressive spirit forms the right complement
+to the decaying ideals of Aristophanes, and gives him the proper flavor
+of antiquity. Instead of seeing him in the broad light of a direct
+dramatic presentation we see him indirectly through Balaustion's thoughts
+and moods, who, though permitting him to do full justice to himself, yet
+surrounds him all the time with the subtle influence of her sympathy for
+Euripides.
+
+As the better way to follow the development of the preliminary part of the
+poem is by regarding every step as the outcome of a mood on the part of
+Balaustion, so the better way of following Aristophanes through what seems
+his interminable defence of himself is again by tracing the moods through
+which his arguments express themselves.
+
+Aristophanes comes in half drunk to make his call on Balaustion, and his
+first mood is one of graciousness toward her whose beauty has impressed
+his artistic perceptions, but noticing her dignity and its effect in
+routing the chorus, he immediately begins to be on the defensive. The
+disappearance of his chorus, however, takes him off on a little excursion
+about the moves which are being made by the city to cut down the expense
+of dramatic performances by curtailing the chorus. In a spirit of bravado
+he declares that he does not care so long as he has his actors left. A
+coarse reference causes Balaustion to turn and he changes his mood. He
+acknowledges he is drunk and rushes off into a defence of drunkenness in
+general for playwrights and for himself, which on this occasion came about
+on account of the supper he and his players have attended. He rattles on
+about the supper, telling how the merriment increased until something
+happened. The thought of this something changes his mood completely.
+Balaustion notices it, he reads her expression, and characteristically
+explains the change in himself as due to her fixed regard. The reader is
+left in suspense as to the something which happened, yet it haunts the
+memory, and he feels convinced that some time he is to know what it was.
+
+Now Aristophanes bids Balaustion speak to him without fear. She does so,
+conveying in her welcome both her disapproval and her admiration.
+Aristophanes, evidently piqued, does not answer, but makes personal
+remarks upon the manner of her speech, asking her if she learned tragedy
+from _him_--Euripides. This starts him off on dreams of a new comedy in
+which women shall act, but he concludes that his mission is to ornament
+comedy as he finds it, not invent a new comedy.
+
+This gives Balaustion a chance to ask if in his last play, later than the
+one Euthukles had seen, he had smoothed this ancient club of comedy he
+speaks of into a more human and less brutal implement of warfare, and was
+it a conviction of this new method he might use in comedy which was the
+something that happened at the feast. Aristophanes, as usual when he is
+cornered, makes no direct reply, but asks if Euthukles saw his last play,
+to which Balaustion frankly replies that having seen the first he never
+cared to see the following. Aristophanes avows he can show cause why he
+wrote them, but glances off in a sarcastic reference to Euripides, whose
+art he says belongs to the closet or the cave, not to the world. He
+prefers to stick to the old forms of art and make Athens happy in what
+coarse way she desires. He then proceeds to enlarge upon what that is.
+Then he changes again and asks with various excursions into side issues
+(for example: the rise of comedy; how it is now being regarded by the
+government, which favors tragedy, giving him another chance for a dig at
+Euripides) if he is the man likely to be satisfied to be classed merely a
+comic poet since he wrote the "Birds?" Balaustion encourages him a little
+here, and, cheered up, he goes on to tell how he gave the people draught
+divine in "Wasps" and "Grasshoppers," and how he praised peace by
+showing the kind of pleasures one may have when peace reigns--and still at
+every opportunity casting slurs at the tragic muse, especially Euripides.
+
+He goes on describing his play until he touches on some of the sarcasms
+which make Balaustion wince.
+
+Then he turns about and declares he loathes as much as she does the things
+of which he tells, but his attempts at bringing comedy up to a high level
+having failed, he is obliged to give the Athenians what they want, a
+smartened up version of the "Thesmaphoriazousai," which had failed the
+year before. He describes his triumph with this which was being celebrated
+at the supper when the something happened which is now at last
+described--namely, the entrance of Sophocles, who announces that he
+intends to commemorate the death of Euripides by having his chorus clothed
+in black and ungarlanded at the performance of his play next month.
+
+This startling scene, being prepared for and not brought in until
+Aristophanes has done much talking, seems to throw a sudden flash of
+reality into the poem. Ill-natured criticism, Aristophanes shows, follows
+on the part of the feasters, though Aristophanes' mood is one of sudden
+recognition of the value of Euripides. But when he, sobered for the time
+being, proposes a toast to the Tragic Muse, the feasters consider it a
+joke. He quickly accepts the situation, and comes off triumphant by
+proposing a toast to both muses.
+
+After this Balaustion asks Aristophanes if he will commemorate Euripides
+with them. But his sober mood is gone. He looks about the room, sees
+things that belong to Euripides, and immediately begins stabbing at him.
+Balaustion objects, and upon the theme of respect to the dead he begins
+his usual invective against his rivals, but finally ends by giving respect
+to Euripides, him whose serenity, he declares, could never with his gibes
+be disturbed.
+
+After venting this mood of animosity he begins soberly to discuss the
+origin of comedy. He traces its growth to the point where he found it, and
+enlarges on the improvements he has made, touching, as always, upon the
+criticisms of his opposers, and finally arriving at the chief point of
+difference between himself and Euripides, which he enlarges upon at great
+length. Here the incidental music breaks in with talk between Balaustion
+and Euthukles, in which the former rather tries to excuse herself from
+relating her reply to Aristophanes.
+
+However, she does give her reply, which is conducted in a more truly
+argumentative fashion than the defence of Aristophanes. She picks up his
+points and makes her points against him usually by denying the truth of
+what he has said. Her supreme defence is, however, the reading of the play
+"Herakles."
+
+Aristophanes, touched but not convinced, finally insists that he is
+Athens' best friend. He is no Thamuris to be punished for seeing beyond
+human vision. The last characteristic touch is when Aristophanes catches
+up the psalterion and sings the lyric of Thamuris. Then he departs, and
+Balaustion rehearses the last days of Athens, with Euthukles' part in
+delaying the tragedy of the doomed city.
+
+By threading one's way thus through the apology, not from the point of
+view of Aristophanes' arguments, but from the point of view of his moods,
+one experiences a tremendous sense of the personality of the man.
+Repetitions which are not required for the full presentation of his case
+take their place as natural to a man who is not only inordinately vain but
+is immediately swayed by every suggestion and emotion that comes to him.
+Owing to his volatile temperament the argument is varied by now a bit of
+vivid description like that of the archon's feast when Sophocles appeared,
+now by some merely personal remark to Balaustion.
+
+The criticism in this play, as in that of "Balaustion's Adventure," may be
+considered either as representing some phase of contemporary opinion about
+Aristophanes or as expressing the opinion of the poet himself.
+Balaustion's indignation is especially aroused by the two plays, "The
+Lusistrata" and the "Thesmophoriazousai," both of which she finds utterly
+detestable. It is interesting to compare with this entirely unfavorable
+criticism the feeling of such distinguished classical scholars as Gilbert
+Murray and J. A. Symonds. The first Murray describes as a play "full of
+daring indecency, it is true, but the curious thing is that Aristophanes,
+while professing to ridicule the women, is all through on their side. The
+jokes made by the superior sex at the expense of the inferior--to give
+them their Roman names--are seldom remarkable either for generosity or
+refinement, and it is our author's pleasant humor to accuse everybody of
+every vice he can think of at the moment. Yet with the single exception
+that he credits women with an inordinate fondness for wine parties--the
+equivalent it would seem of afternoon tea--he makes them on the whole
+perceptibly more sensible and more sympathetic than his men."
+
+Of the second play Symonds speaks with actual enthusiasm. "It has a
+regular plot--an intrigue and a solution--and its persons are not
+allegorical but real. Thus it approaches the standard of modern comedy.
+But the plot, though gigantic in its scale, and prodigious in its wealth
+of wit and satire, is farcical. The artifices by which Euripides endeavors
+to win Agathon to undertake his cause, the disguise of Muesilochus in
+female attire, the oratory of the old man against the women in the midst
+of their assembly, his detection, the momentary suspension of the dramatic
+action by his seizure of the supposed baby, his slaughter of the swaddled
+wine jar, his apprehension by Cleisthenes, the devices and disguises by
+which Euripides endeavors to extricate his father-in-law from the scrape,
+and the final _ruse_ by which he eludes the Scythian bowmen, and carries
+off Muesilochus in triumph--all these form a series of highly diverting
+comic scenes." Again, "There is no passage in Aristophanes more amusing
+than the harangue of Muesilochus. The portrait, too, of Agathon in the act
+of composition is exquisitely comic. But the crowning sport of the
+'Thesmophoriazousai' is in the last scene when Muesilochus adapts the
+Palamedes and the Helen of Euripides to his own forlorn condition,
+jumbling up the well-known verses of these tragedies with coarse-flavored,
+rustical remarks; and when at last Euripides, himself, acts Echo and
+Perseus to the Andromeda of his father-in-law, and both together mystify
+the policeman by their ludicrous utterance of antiphonal lamentation."
+
+In her welcome of him, Balaustion expresses rather what she thinks he
+might be than what she really thinks he is. She welcomes him:
+
+  "Good Genius! Glory of the poet, glow
+  O' the humorist who castigates his kind,
+  Suave summer-lightning lambency which plays
+  On stag-horned tree, misshapen crag askew,
+  Then vanishes with unvindictive smile
+  After a moment's laying black earth bare.
+  Splendor of wit that springs a thunder ball--
+  Satire--to burn and purify the world,
+  True aim, fair purpose: just wit justly strikes
+  Injustice,--right, as rightly quells the wrong,
+  Finds out in knaves', fools', cowards', armory
+  The tricky tinselled place fire flashes through.
+  No damage else, sagacious of true ore;
+  Wit learned in the laurel, leaves each wreath
+  O'er lyric shell or tragic barbiton,--
+  Though alien gauds be singed,--undesecrate."
+
+Her attitude here is very like that of criticism in general, except that
+she is more or less sarcastic, meaning to imply that such Aristophanes
+might be but is not. Symonds, on the other hand, thinks him really what
+Balaustion thinks he might be.
+
+"If," he says, "Coleridge was justified in claiming the German word
+Lustspiel for the so-called comedies of Shakespeare, we have a far greater
+right to appropriate this wide and pregnant title to the plays of
+Aristophanes. The brazen mask which crowns his theatre smiles indeed
+broadly, serenely, as if its mirth embraced the universe; but its hollow
+eye-sockets suggest infinite possibilities of profoundest irony.
+Buffoonery carried to the point of paradox, wisdom disguised as insanity,
+and gaiety concealing the whole sum of human disappointment, sorrow and
+disgust, seem ready to escape from its open but rigid lips, which are
+molded to a proud perpetual laughter. It is a laughter which spares
+neither God nor man--which climbs Olympus only to drag down the immortals
+to its scorn, and trails the pall of august humanity in the mire; but
+which, amid its mockery and blasphemy, seems everlastingly asserting, as
+by paradox, that reverence of the soul which bends our knees to heaven and
+makes us respect our brothers."
+
+One cannot help feeling, in view of these very diverse opinions, that both
+are exaggerated. The enthusiasm of Symonds seems almost fanatic. Though no
+one of penetration can fail to see the wit and wisdom, and at times, in
+such lyrics as those in "The Clouds," the poetic charm of Aristophanes,
+the person of fastidious taste, whether a Greek girl of his own day, or a
+man of these latter days, must sometimes feel that his buffoonery
+oversteps the bounds of true wit, even when it is not shadowed by a
+coarseness not to be borne at the present day. When Balaustion asks him
+"in plain words,"
+
+  "Have you exchanged brute blows, which teach the brute
+  Man may surpass him in brutality,--
+  For human fighting, or true god-like force
+  Which breeds persuasion nor needs fight at all?"
+
+Aristophanes replies that it had not been his intention to turn art's
+fabric upside down and invent an entirely new species of comedy. That sort
+of thing can be done by one who has turned his back on life, friendly
+faces, sympathetic cheer, as Euripides had done in his Salaminian cave.
+
+This may be regarded, on the whole, as a good bit of defence on
+Aristophanes' part. It is equivalent to his saying that there was no use
+in his trying to be anything for which his genius had not fitted him. This
+chimes in, again, with such authoritative criticism as Murray's, who
+declares: "The general value of his view of life, and, above all, his
+treatment of his opponent's alleged vices, may well be questioned. Yet
+admitting that he often opposed what was best in his age, or advocated it
+on the lowest grounds, admitting that his slanders are beyond description
+and that, as a rule, he only attacks the poor and the leaders of the poor,
+nevertheless he does it all with such exhuberant high spirits, such an air
+of its all being nonsense together, such insight and swiftness, such
+incomparable directness and charm of style, that even if some Archelaus
+had handed him over to Euripides to scourge, he would probably have
+escaped his well-earned whipping."
+
+Much of Aristophanes' defence consists in slurring at Euripides, against
+whom he waxes more and more fierce as he goes on. His plays furnish
+numerous illustrations of his rivalry with Euripides, yet curiously
+enough, as critics have pointed out, Aristophanes imitates Euripides to a
+noteworthy extent, so much so that the dramatist Cratinus invented a word
+to describe the style of the two--Euripid-Aristophanize. Judging from his
+parodies on Euripides, he must certainly have read and reread his plays
+until he knew them practically by heart.
+
+Balaustion, as Browning has portrayed her in this poem, is the lyric girl
+developed into splendid womanhood. She has a large heart and a large
+brain, as well as imagination and strong ethical fervor. Her intense
+feeling at the fall of Athens, which had been the ideal to her of
+greatness, and her reverential love for Euripides, her charity toward
+Aristophanes the man, if not toward his work, show how deep and
+far-reaching her sympathies were. Again, her imagination flashes forth in
+her picturesque descriptions of the ruined Athens and her prophetic
+picture of the new Athens, of the spirit which will arise in its place, in
+her telling portraiture of Aristophanes and his entrance into her house,
+as well as in many another passage. Her intellect shines out in her clever
+management of the argument with Aristophanes, and her ethical fervor in
+her denunciations of the moral depravity of certain of the plays.
+
+As to the question of whether a young Greek woman would be likely to
+criticise Aristophanes in this way, opinion certainly differs. History is,
+for the most part, silent about women. As Mahaffy says, it is only in the
+dramatists and the philosophers that we can get any glimpses of the woman
+of the time.
+
+Mahaffy's opinions are worth quoting as an example of the pessimism
+growing out of a bias in favor of a particular type of woman which he
+idealized in his own mind. He seems utterly incapable of appreciating the
+humanness of the women in the Greek dramatists, especially those in
+Euripides. "Sadder than the condition of the aged was that of women," he
+writes, "at this remarkable period. The days of the noble and
+high-principled Penelope, of the refined and intellectual Helen, of the
+innocent and spirited Nausikaa, of the gentle and patient Andromache, had
+passed away. Men no longer sought and respected the society of the gentler
+sex. Would that Euripides had even been familiar, as Homer was, with the
+sound of women brawling in the streets! For in these days they were
+confined to Asiatic silence and seclusion, while the whole life of the
+men, both in business and recreation, was essentially public. Just as the
+feverish excitement of political life nowadays prompts men to spend even
+their leisure in the clubs, where they meet companions of like passions
+and interests with themselves, so the Athenian gentleman only came home
+to eat and sleep. His leisure as well as his business kept him in the
+market place. His wife and daughters, ignorant of philosophy and politics,
+were strangers to his real life, and took no interest in his pursuits.
+
+"The results were fatal to Athenian society. The women, uninstructed,
+neglected, and enslaved, soon punished their oppressors with their own
+keen and bitter weapons, and with none keener than their vices. For, of
+course, all the grace and delicacy of female character disappeared.
+Intellectual power in women was distinctly associated with moral
+depravity, so that excessive ignorance and stupidity was considered the
+only guarantee of virtue. The qualifications for society became
+incompatible with the qualifications for home duties, so that the outcasts
+from society, as we call them, were not the immoral and the profligate but
+the honorable and the virtuous."
+
+Such is the view to be gleaned from history, and in Mahaffy's opinion the
+literature of the time tells the same story. He goes on: "When we consult
+the literature of the day, we find women treated either with contemptuous
+ridicule in comedy, or with still more contemptuous silence in history. In
+tragedy or in the social theories of the philosophers alone can we hope
+for a glimpse into the average character and position of Athenian women.
+Here at least we might have expected that the portraits drawn with such
+consummate skill by Homer would have been easily transferred to the
+Athenian stage. But to our astonishment we find the higher social feelings
+toward women so weak that the Athenian tragic poets seem quite unable to
+appreciate, or even to understand, the more delicate features in Homeric
+characters. They are painted so coarsely and ignorantly by Euripides that
+we should never recognize them but for their names. Base motives and
+unseemly wrangling take the place of chivalrous honor and graceful
+politeness.
+
+"But the critics of the day complained that Euripides degraded the ideal
+character of tragedy by painting human nature as he found it: in fact as
+it was, and not as it ought to be. Let us turn, then, to Sophokles, who
+painted the most ideal women which the imagination of a refined Athenian
+could conceive, and consider his most celebrated characters, his Antigone
+and his Elektra. A calm, dispassionate survey will, I think, pronounce
+them harsh and masculine. They act rightly, no doubt, and even nobly, but
+they do it in the most disagreeable way. Except in their external
+circumstances they differ in no respect from men."
+
+Certainly, the opinion expressed of the women of Euripides is tainted by
+the feeling that they ought to act like English matrons and their
+daughters.
+
+Quite a different impression is given by Symonds, who, in regard to some
+of the sentences occurring in Euripides which are uncomplimentary to
+women, says: "It is impossible to weigh occasional sententious sarcasms
+against such careful studies of heroic virtue in women as the Iphigenia,
+the Elektra, the Polyxena, the Alkestis."
+
+But the complete vindication of the fact that Balaustion and Mrs. Browning
+and our own women of to-day are on the right side in their appreciation of
+Euripides as the great woman's poet of antiquity is found in the opinion
+of our contemporary critic, Gilbert Murray, who more than thirty years
+after these poems were written writes of the "wonderful women-studies by
+which Euripides dazzled and aggrieved his contemporaries. They called him
+a hater of women; and Aristophanes makes the women of Athens conspire for
+revenge against him. Of course he was really the reverse. He loved and
+studied and expressed the women whom the Socratics ignored and Pericles
+advised to stay in their rooms. Crime, however, is always more striking
+and palpable than virtue. Heroines like Medea, Phaedra, Stheneboia,
+Aerope, Clytemnestra, perhaps fill the imagination more than those of the
+angelic or devoted type--Alcestis, who died to save her husband, Evadne
+and Laodamia, who could not survive theirs, and all the great list of
+virgin-martyrs. But the significant fact is that, like Ibsen, Euripides
+refuses to idealize any man, and does idealize women. There is one
+youth-martyr, Menoikeus in the 'Phaenissae,' but his martyrdom is a
+masculine, businesslike performance--he gets rid of his prosaic father by
+a pretext about traveling money without that shimmer of loveliness that
+hangs over the virgins."
+
+Where then did Euripides find these splendid women of force and character?
+It seems quite impossible that he could have evolved them out of his own
+inner consciousness. He must have known women who served at least, in
+part, as models. Besides, there was undoubtedly a new woman movement in
+the air or Plato in his "Republic" would not have suggested a plan for
+educating men and women alike. The free women of Athens are known in some
+cases to have attained a high degree of culture. Aspasia, who became the
+wife of Pericles, is a shining example. There was Sappho, also, with her
+school of poetry attended by girls in Lesbos.
+
+Taking all these facts into consideration, it would seem that Browning was
+sufficiently justified in drawing such a woman as Balaustion, and that a
+woman of her penetrating intellect and ardor of spirit would love
+Euripides, and dislike Aristophanes, seems absolutely certain.
+
+Therefore, if the historical attitude is taken toward Balaustion and her
+criticism and appreciation, it can be on the whole accepted as reflecting
+what would probably be the feeling of an ardent woman-follower of
+Euripides in his own day.
+
+But, on the other hand, if the criticism be taken as Browning's own, it is
+open to question whether it is partisan rather than entirely broad-minded.
+Take the consensus of opinion of modern critics and we find them all
+agreed in regard to the genius of Aristophanes, though admitting that his
+coarseness must, at times, detract from their enjoyment of him.
+
+There is much truth in Symonds' criticism of the poem. He says of it: "As
+a sophist and a rhetorician of poetry, Mr. Browning proves himself
+unrivaled, and takes rank with the best writers of historical romances.
+Yet students may fairly accuse him of some special pleading in favor of
+his friends and against his foes. It is true that Aristophanes did not
+bring back again the golden days of Greece; true that his comedy revealed
+a corruption latent in Athenian life. But neither was Euripides in any
+sense a savior. Impartiality regards them both as equally destructive:
+Aristophanes, because he indulged animalism and praised ignorance in an
+age which ought to have outgrown both; Euripides, because he criticised
+the whole fabric of Greek thought and feeling in an age which had not yet
+distinguished between analysis and skepticism.
+
+"What has just been said about Mr. Browning's special pleading indicates
+the chief fault to be found with his poem. The point of view is modern.
+The situation is strained. Aristophanes becomes the scapegoat of Athenian
+sins, while Euripides shines forth a saint as well as a sage. Balaustion,
+for her part, beautiful as her conception truly is, takes up a position
+which even Plato could not have assumed. Into her mouth Mr. Browning has
+put the views of the most searching and most sympathetic modern analyst.
+She judges Euripides not as he appeared to his own Greeks, but as he
+strikes the warmest of his admirers, who compare his work with that of all
+the poets who have ever lived."
+
+It would seem that Mr. Symonds, himself, does some special pleading here.
+As we have seen, Euripides, though not a favorite in Athens, did have warm
+admirers in his own day; consequently there is nothing out of the way in
+portraying one of his contemporaries as an admirer. Furthermore,
+Balaustion does not represent him as a savior of his age. She sees only
+too clearly that in the narrow sense of convincing his age he has not been
+a success. What is her vision of the spiritual Athens which is to arise
+but a confession of this fact! Nor is it entirely improbable that she
+might be prophetic of a time when Euripides will be recognized as the true
+power. Any disciple of a poet ahead of his time perceives these things.
+One should be careful in judging of the poem as good modern criticism not
+to be entirely guided by the opinions of Balaustion. It should never be
+forgotten that it is a dramatic poem in which Aristophanes is allowed to
+speak for himself at great length, and whatever can be accepted as good
+argument for himself upon his own ground should be set over against the
+sweeping strictures of Balaustion. Indeed it may turn out that Browning
+has, after all, said for him the most exculpatory word of any critic, for
+he has so presented his case as to show that he considers him the outcome
+of the undeveloped phase of morals then existing for which he is hardly
+responsible because the higher light has not yet broken in upon him. This
+is evidenced especially in the strange combination in him of a frank
+belief in a life of the senses which goes along with a puritanical
+reverence for the gods, and a hatred of anything that falls within his own
+definition of vice.
+
+To sum up, if I may again be forgiven for re-expressing an opinion
+elsewhere printed, which states as clearly as I am able to do my
+conviction of where the play stands as criticism, like all dramatic work,
+this poem aims to present the actual spirit of the time in which the
+actors moved upon the stage of life, and to reproduce something of their
+mental and emotional natures. Any criticism of the poets who figure in the
+poem, or of the larger question of the quarrel between tragedy and comedy,
+should be deduced indirectly, as implied in the sympathetic presentation
+of both sides, not based exclusively upon direct expressions of opinion
+on either side. So regarded it would seem that Browning was able to
+appreciate the genius of Aristophanes as well as that of Euripides, but
+that he considered Aristophanes to have value chiefly in relation to his
+age, as the artistic mouthpiece of its long-established usages, while
+Euripides had caught the breath of the future, and was the mirror of the
+prophetic impulses of his age rather than of its dominant civilization.
+
+It is not improbable that Landor's fascinating portrayal of the brilliant
+Aspasia may have had some influence upon Browning's conception of
+Balaustion, upon the intellectual side at least. Alcibiades says that many
+people think her language as pure and elegant as Pericles, and Pericles
+says she was never seen out of temper or forgetful of what argument to
+urge first and most forcibly. When all is said, however, it may be that
+the "halo irised around" Balaustion's head was due, more than to any one
+else, to the influence of the memory of Mrs. Browning, of whom she is made
+to say with a sublime disregard of its anachronism:
+
+  "I know the poetess who graved in gold,
+  Among her glories that shall never fade,
+  This style and title for Euripides,
+  _The Human with his droppings of warm tears_."
+
+After such a study of Greek life as this, wherein every available incident
+in history, every episode in the plays of Aristophanes bearing on the
+subject, every contemporary allusion are all woven together with such
+consummate skill that the very soul and body of the time is imaged forth,
+the classical poems of the other great names of the century seem almost
+like child's play. Landor's poems on Greek subjects sound like imitations
+in inferior material of antiquity. Arnold's are even duller. Swinburne
+tells his Greek tales in an endless flow of rhythmical, musical verse,
+which occasionally rises into the realm of having something to say. Morris
+tells his at equal length in a manner suggestive of Chaucer without
+Chaucer's snap, but where among them all is there such a bit of stinging
+life as in "Pheidippedes" or "Echetlos?"
+
+[Illustration: WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR]
+
+Tennyson has, it is true, written some altogether exquisite verse, upon
+classical themes, and in every case the poems are not descriptive nor
+dramatic, but are dramatic soliloquies, thus approaching in form
+Browning's dramatic idyls. One of the most beautiful of these is "Oenone."
+There we have a mere tradition enlarged upon and the feelings of Oenone
+upon the desertion of Paris expressed with a richness of emotional fervor
+in a setting of appropriate nature imagery which carries us back to the
+idyls of Theocritus. "Ulysses," again gives the psychology of a wanderer
+who has become so habituated to adventures that he is quite incapable of
+settling down with Penelope for the remainder of his life. One cannot
+quite forgive the poet for calling the ever youthful and beautiful
+Penelope, whose hand was sought by so many suitors, and who, although
+twenty years had passed, might still be quite young, an "aged wife." It
+has always seemed to the writer like a wholly unnecessary stab at a very
+beautiful story, and the poem would have been just as effective if
+Ulysses' hunger for lands beyond the sun had not been coupled with any
+scorn of Penelope, but with a feeling of pain that again Fate must take
+him away from her. Aside from this note of bad taste--bad, because it
+shadows a picture of faithfulness, cherished as an almost universal
+possession of humanity--the poem is fine. There is also, though not Greek,
+the remarkable study of Lucretius going mad from the effects of his wife's
+love philter, in which the most fascinating glimpses of his philosophy of
+atoms are caught amid his maniacal wanderings, and, last, the very
+beautiful Demeter and Persephone.
+
+These are as unique in their way as Browning's Greek poems are in theirs,
+standing quite apart from such work as Morris', or Swinburne's, not only
+because of their haunting music, which even Swinburne cannot equal, but
+because of a deeper vein of thought running through them. As far as
+thought is concerned, however, all pale in significance the moment they
+are placed in juxtaposition with any of Browning's classical productions.
+
+Not the least interesting of Browning's classical poems is "Ixion." In his
+treatment of the myth of Ixion he proves himself a true child of the
+Greeks, not that he makes any slavish attempt to reproduce a Greek
+atmosphere as it existed in the lifetime of Greek poetry, but he exercises
+that prerogative which the Greek poets always claimed, of interpreting a
+myth to suit their own ends.
+
+It has become a sort of critical axiom to compare Browning's "Ixion" with
+the "Prometheus" of literature. This is one of those catching analogies
+which lay hold upon the mind, and cannot be shaken off again without
+considerable difficulty. Mr. Arthur Symons first spoke of the resemblance;
+and almost every other critic with the exception of Mr. Nettleship has
+dwelt mainly upon that aspect of the poem which bears out the comparison.
+But why, it might very well be asked, did Browning, if he intended to make
+another Prometheus, choose Ixion for his theme? And the answer is evident,
+because in the story of Ixion he found some quality different from any
+which existed in the story of Prometheus, and which was especially suited
+to the end he had in view.
+
+The kernel of the myth of Prometheus as developed by AEschylus is proud,
+unflinching suffering of punishment, inflicted, not by a god justly angry
+for sin against himself, but by a god sternly mindful of his own
+prerogatives, whose only right is might, and jealous of any interference
+in behalf of the race which he detested--the race of man. Thus Prometheus
+stands out as a hero in Greek mythology, a mediator between man and the
+blind anger of a god of unconditional power; and Prometheus, with an
+equally blind belief in Fate, accepts while he defies the punishment
+inflicted by Zeus. He tacitly acknowledges the right of Zeus to punish
+him, since he confesses his deeds to be sins, but, nevertheless, he would
+do exactly the same thing over again:
+
+                "By my choice, my choice
+  I freely sinned--I will confess my sin--
+  And helping mortals found mine own despair."
+
+On the other hand, Ixion never appears in classic lore as a hero. He has
+been called the "Cain" of Greece, because he was the first, as Pindar
+says, "to introduce to mortal men the murder of kin not unaccompanied by
+cunning." Zeus appears, however, to have shown more leniency to him for
+the crime of killing his father-in-law than he ever did to Prometheus, as
+he not only purified him from murder, but invited him to a seat among the
+gods. But to quote Pindar again, "he found his prosperity too great to
+bear, when with infatuate mind he became enamored of Hera.... Thus his
+conceit drave him to an act of enormous folly, but the man soon suffered
+his deserts, and received an exquisite torture." Ixion, then, in direct
+contrast to Prometheus, stands forth an embodiment of the most detestable
+of sins, perpetrated simply for personal ends. To depict such a man as
+this in an attitude of defiance, and yet to justify his defiance, is a far
+more difficult problem than to justify the already admired heroism of
+Prometheus. It is entirely characteristic of Browning that he should
+choose perhaps the most unprincipled character in the whole range of Greek
+mythology as his hero. He is not content, like Emerson, with simply
+telling us that "in the mud and scum of things there alway, alway
+something sings"; his aim is ever to bring us face to face with reality,
+and to open our ears that we may hear for ourselves this universal song.
+In fine, Browning chose Ixion and not another, because he wanted above all
+things an unquestioned sinner; and the task he set himself was to show the
+use of sin and at the same time exonerate the sinner from the eternal
+consequences of his act.
+
+So mystical is the language of the poem that it is extremely difficult to
+trace behind it the subtle reasoning. Mr. Nettleship has given by far the
+best exposition of the poem, though even he does not seize all its
+suggestiveness.
+
+Ixion, the sinner, suffering eternal torment, questions the justice of
+such torment. The first very important conclusion to which he comes, and
+it is one entirely in accord with science, is that sin is an aberration of
+sense, merely the result of external conditions in which the soul of man
+has no active part. The soul simply dreams, but once fully awakened, it
+would free itself from this bondage of sense if it were allowed to do so.
+Ixion argues that it is Zeus that hath made him and not he himself, and if
+he has sinned it is through the bodily senses which Zeus has conferred
+upon him, and if he were the friendly and all-powerful god which he
+claimed himself to be and which Ixion believed he was, why did he allow
+these distractions of sense to lead him (Ixion) into sin which could only
+be expiated by eternal punishment? Without body there would have been
+nothing to obstruct his soul's rush upon the real; and with one touch of
+pitying power Zeus might have dispersed "this film-work, eye's and ear's."
+It is entirely the fault of Zeus that he had sinned; and having done so
+will external torture make him repent any more who has repented already?
+This is the old, old problem that has taxed the brains of many a
+philosopher and the faith of many a theologian--the reconcilement of the
+existence of evil with an omnipotent God. Then follows a comparison
+between the actions of Zeus, a god, and of Ixion, the human king; and
+Ixion declares could he have known all, as Zeus does, he would have warded
+off evil from his subjects, would have seen that they were trained aright
+from the first--in fact, would not have allowed evil to exist, or failing
+this, could he have seen the heart of the criminals and realized how they
+repented he would have given them a chance to retrieve their past. Ixion
+now realizes that his human ideal is higher than that of Zeus. He had
+imagined him possessed of human qualities, and finds his qualities are
+less than human. What must be the inevitable result of arriving at such a
+conclusion? It means the dethronement of the god, and either a lapse into
+hopeless atheism or the recognition that the conception formed of the god
+was that of the human mind at an earlier stage of understanding. This
+conception becomes crystallized into an anthropomorphic god; but the mind
+of man goes onward on its way to higher heights, and lo! there comes a day
+when the god-ideal of the past is lower than the human ideal of the
+present. It is such a crisis as this that Ixion has arrived at, and his
+faith is equal to the strain. Since Zeus is man's own mind-made god,
+Ixion's tortures must be the natural consequences of his sin, and not the
+arbitrary punishment of a god; and what is Ixion's sin as Browning has
+interpreted the myth?
+
+The sin is that of arrogance. Ixion, a mere man, strives to be on an
+equality with gods. In Lucian's dialogue between Hera and Zeus the stress
+is laid upon the arrogance of Ixion. Jupiter declares that Ixion shall pay
+the "penalty not of his love--for that surely is not so dreadful a
+crime--but of his loud boasting." Browning raises the sin into a rarer
+atmosphere than that of the Greek or Latin. Zeus and Hera may be taken to
+represent the attributes of power and love as conceived by man in
+Divinity; and Ixion, symbolic of man, arrogantly supposes that he is
+capable of putting himself on an equality with Divinity by conceiving the
+entire nature of Divinity, that out of his finite mind he can construct
+the absolute god, and this is the sin, or, better, the aberration of
+sense, which results in the crystallization of his former inadequate
+conceptions into an anthropomorphic god, and causes his own downfall.
+Ixion, now fully aroused to the fact that the god he has been defying is
+but his own miserable conception of God, realizes that the suffering
+caused by this conception of God is the very means through which man
+struggles toward higher ideals: through evil he is brought to a
+recognition of the good; from his agony is bred the rainbow of hope, which
+ever shines above him glorified by the light from a Purity far beyond,
+all-unobstructed. Successive conceptions of God must sink; but man,
+however misled by them, must finally burst through the obstructions of
+sense, freeing his spirit to aspire forever toward the light.
+
+"Ixion," then, is not merely an argument against eternal punishment, nor
+a picture of heroic suffering, though he who will may draw these lessons
+from it, but it is a tremendous symbol of the spiritual development of
+man. Pure in its essence, the spirit learns through the obstructions of
+sense to yearn forever for higher attainment, and this constitutes the
+especial blessedness of man as contrasted with Zeus. He, like the
+Pythagorean Father of Number, is the conditioned one; but man is
+privileged through all aeons of time to break through conditions, and thus
+Ixion, triumphant, exclaims:
+
+            "Where light, where light is, aspiring
+  Thither I rise, whilst thou--Zeus, keep the godship and sink."
+
+In these poems, as in other phases of his work, Browning runs the gamut of
+life, of art, and of thought. He has set a new standard in regard to the
+handling of classic material, one which should open the field of classic
+lore afresh to future poets. Instead of trying to ape in more or less
+ineffectual imitations the style and thought of the great masters of
+antiquity, or simply use their mythology as a well-spring of romance to be
+clothed in whatever vagaries of style the individual poet might be able to
+invent, the aim of the future poet should be to reconstruct the life and
+thought of that wonderful civilization. One playwright, at least, has made
+a step in the right direction. I refer to Gilbert Murray, whose classical
+scholarship has thrown so much light upon the vexed questions of
+Browning's attitude toward Euripides, and who, in his "Andromache," has
+written a play, not in classical, but in modern form, which seems to bring
+us more into touch with the life of Homer's day than even Homer himself.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+PROPHETIC VISIONS
+
+
+The division between centuries, though it be an arbitrary one, does
+actually appear to mark fairly definite steps in human development, and
+already there are indications that the twentieth century is taking on a
+character quite distinct from that of the nineteenth. It looks now as if
+it were to be the century of the realization of mankind's wildest dreams
+in the past. Air navigation, the elixir of life, perpetual motion, are
+some of them. About the first no one can now have much skepticism, for if
+airships are not as yet common objects of the everyday sky, they, at
+least, occupy a large share of attention in the magazines, while the
+aviator, a being who did not exist in the last century, is now the hero of
+the hour.
+
+With regard to the second, though no sparkling elixir distilled from some
+rare flower, such as that Septimius Felton sought in Hawthorne's tale, has
+been discovered, the great scientist Metchnikoff has brought to light a
+preserver of youth more in keeping with the science of the day--namely, a
+microbe, possessing power to destroy the poison that produces age. Whether
+perpetual youth is to lead to immortality in the flesh will probably be a
+question for other centuries to discuss, though if Metchnikoff is right
+there is no reason why we should not retain our youthfulness all our lives
+in this century. Add to this, machinery run by the perpetual energy of
+radium--a possibility, if radium can ever be obtained in sufficient
+quantities to supply the needed power to keep modern civilization on its
+ceaseless "go"--and we may picture to ourselves, before the end of the
+twentieth century, youths of ninety starting forth on voyages of thirty
+years in radium ships, which, like the fairy watch of the Princess
+Rossetta, will never go wrong and will never need to be wound up,
+metaphorically speaking. It would almost seem as if some method of
+enlarging the earth, or of arranging voyages to the moon and Mars, would
+be necessary in order to give the new radium machinery sufficient scope
+for its activities. However, at present it seems unlikely that it will
+ever be possible to produce more than half an ounce of radium a year. As
+it would take a ton to run one ship for thirty years, and the expense
+would be something almost incalculable, it is a dream only to be realized
+by the inventing of methods by which the feeble radio-activity known to
+exist in many other substances can be utilized. These methods have not yet
+been invented, but it is a good deal that they have been thought of, for
+what man thinks of he generally seems to have the indomitable energy to
+accomplish.
+
+How such inventions as these, even if very far from attaining success, may
+affect the social and thought ideals of the century it is impossible to
+say. The automobile is said to have brought about a change, not altogether
+beneficial, to the intellectual and artistic growth of society to-day. It
+has taken such powerful possession of the minds of humanity that homes
+have been mortgaged, music and books and pictures have been sacrificed, in
+order that all the money procurable could be put into the machines and
+their running. You hear complaints against the automobile from writers,
+musicians, and artists. The only thing that really has a good sale is the
+automobile. What effect rushing about so constantly at high speed in the
+open air is to have on the brain-power is another interesting problem.
+Perhaps it is this growing subjective delight in motion which is causing
+the development of an artistic taste dependent upon motion as its chief
+element. Motion pictures and dancing appeal to the public with such
+insistence that plays will not hold successfully without an almost
+exaggerated attention to action and dancing, which, whenever it is at all
+possible, make a part of the "show."
+
+The pictures of the new school of painters, the futurists, also reveal the
+craze for motion. They try to put into their pictures the successive and
+decidedly blurred impressions, from the illustrations I have seen, of
+scenes in motion, with a result that is certainly startling and
+interesting, but which it is difficult to believe is beautiful. One has a
+horrible suspicion that all this emphasis upon motion in art is a running
+to seed of the art which appeals to the eye and with a psychological
+content derived principally from sensation. Perhaps in some other century,
+fatuous humanity will like to listen to operas or to plays in a pitch-dark
+theatre. This will represent the going to seed of the art which appeals to
+the ear, and a psychological content derived principally from sentiment.
+
+While movement seems to be the keynote of the century thus far, in its
+everyday life and in its art manifestation, very interesting developments
+are taking place in scientific theories and in philosophy, as well as in
+the world of education and sociology.
+
+In relation to Browning and the other chief poets of the nineteenth
+century, the only aspects of interest are in the region of thought and
+social ideals.
+
+With the exception of Tennyson, no other of the chief poets of the century
+need be considered in this connection with Browning, because, as we have
+seen in a previous chapter, they reflected on the whole the prevalent
+disbelief and doubt of the century which came with the revelations of
+science. Many people have regarded Tennyson as the chief prophet of the
+century. He seems, however, to the present writer to have held an attitude
+which reflected the general tone of religious aspiration in the century,
+rather than one which struck a new note indicating the direction in which
+future religious aspiration might turn.
+
+The conflict in his mind is between doubt and belief. To doubt he has
+often given the most poignant expression, as in his poem called "Despair."
+The story is of a man and his wife who have lost all religious faith
+through the reading of scientific books:
+
+  "Have I crazed myself over their horrible infidel writings? O, yes,
+  For these are the new dark ages, you see, of the popular press,
+  When the bat comes out of his cave, and the owls are whooping at noon,
+  And doubt is the lord of the dunghill, and crows to the sun and the moon,
+  Till the sun and the moon of our science are both of them turned into
+      blood.
+  And hope will have broken her heart, running after a shadow of good;
+  For their knowing and know-nothing books are scatter'd from hand to
+      hand--
+  _We_ have knelt in your know-all chapel, too, looking over the sand."
+
+If the effect of science was bad upon this weak-minded pair, the effect of
+religion as it had been taught them was no better. The absolute
+hopelessness of a blasted faith in all things reaches its climax in the
+following stanzas:
+
+  "And the suns of the limitless universe sparkled and shone in the sky,
+  Flashing with fires as of God, but we knew that their light was a lie--
+  Bright as with deathless hope--but, however they sparkled and shone,
+  The dark little worlds running round them were worlds of woe like our
+      own--
+  No soul in the heaven above, no soul on the earth below,
+  A fiery scroll written over with lamentation and woe.
+
+  "See, we were nursed in the drear nightfold of your fatalist creed,
+  And we turn'd to the growing dawn, we had hoped for a dawn indeed,
+  When the light of a sun that was coming would scatter the ghosts of the
+      past.
+  And the cramping creeds that had madden'd the peoples would vanish at
+      last,
+  And we broke away from the Christ, our human brother and friend,
+  For He spoke, or it seemed that He spoke, of a hell without help,
+      without end.
+
+  "Hoped for a dawn, and it came, but the promise had faded away;
+  We had passed from a cheerless night to the glare of a drearier day;
+  He is only a cloud and a smoke who was once a pillar of fire,
+  The guess of a worm in the dust and the shadow of its desire--
+  Of a worm as it writhes in a world of the weak trodden down by the
+      strong,
+  Of a dying worm in a world, all massacre, murder and wrong."
+
+There are many hopeful passages in Tennyson to offset such deep pessimism
+as is expressed in this one, which, moreover, being a dramatic utterance
+it must be remembered, does not reflect any settled conviction on the
+poet's part, though it shows him liable to moods of the most extreme
+doubt. In "The Ancient Sage" the agnostic spirit of the century is fully
+described, but instead of leading to a mood of despair, the mood is one
+of clinging to faith in the face of all doubt. The sage speaking, says:
+
+  "Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son,
+  Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in,
+  Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,
+  Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one.
+  Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no,
+  Nor yet that thou art mortal--nay, my son,
+  Thou canst not prove that I who speak with thee,
+  Are not thyself in converse with thyself,
+  For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
+  Nor yet disproven. Wherefore thou be wise,
+  Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
+  And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith!
+  She reels not in the storm of warring words,
+  She brightens at the clash of 'Yes' and 'No.'
+  She sees the best that glimmers thro' the worst,
+  She feels the sun is hid but for a night,
+  She spies the summer thro' the winter bud,
+  She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
+  She hears the lark within the songless egg,
+  She finds the fountain where they wail'd Mirage!"
+
+There is nothing here more reassuring than a statement made by the sage,
+based upon no argument, nor revelation, nor intuition--nothing but the
+utilitarian doctrine that it will be wiser to cling to Faith beyond Faith!
+This is a sample of the sort of assurance in the reality of God and of
+immortality which Tennyson was in the habit of giving. In the poem called
+"Vastness" he presents with genuine power a pessimistic view of humanity
+and civilization in all its various phases--all of no use, neither the
+good any more than the bad, "if we all of us end but in being our own
+corpse-coffins at last?" The effect of the dismal atmosphere of the poem
+as a whole is supposed to be dissipated by the last stanza:
+
+  "Peace, let it be! for I loved him, and love him forever: the dead are
+      not dead but alive."
+
+The conviction here of immortality through personal love is born of the
+feeling that his friend whom he has loved must live forever. The note of
+"In Memoriam" is sounded again. Tennyson's philosophy, in a nutshell,
+seems to be that doubts are not so much overcome as quieted by a
+struggling faith in the truths of religion, of which the chief assurance
+lies in the thought of personal love. Not as in Browning, that human love,
+because of its beauty and ecstasy, is a symbol of divine love, but because
+of its wish to be reunited to the one beloved is an earnest of continued
+existence. While Tennyson's poetry is saturated with allusions to the
+science of the century, it seems to be ever the dark side of the doctrine
+of evolution that is dwelt upon by him, while his religion is held to in
+spite of the truths of science, not because the truths of science have
+given him in any way a new revelation of beauty.
+
+Much more emphasis has been laid upon Tennyson's importance as a prophet
+in religious matters than seems to the present writer warranted. He did
+not even keep pace with the thought of the century, though his poetry
+undoubtedly reflected the liberalized theology of the earlier years of the
+second half of the century. As Joseph Jacobs says, "In Memoriam" has been
+to the Broad Church Movement what the "Christian Year" has been to the
+High Church. But where is the Broad Church now? Tennyson was, on the
+whole, adverse to evolution, which has been almost an instinct in English
+speculation for the last quarter of a century. So far as he was the voice
+of his age in speculative matters, he only represented the thought of the
+"sixties."
+
+What vision Tennyson did have came not through intuition or the higher
+reason, but through his psychic power of self-hypnotism. In "The Ancient
+Sage" is a passage describing the sort of trance into which he could
+evidently cause himself to fall:
+
+                          "For more than once when I
+  Sat all alone, revolving in myself
+  The word that is the symbol of myself,
+  The mortal limit of the self was loosed,
+  And passed into the Nameless, as a cloud
+  Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs
+  Were strange, not mine--and yet no shade of doubt,
+  But utter clearness, and thro' loss of self,
+  The gain of such large life as match'd with ours
+  Were sun to spark--unshadowable in words,
+  Themselves but shadows of a shadow world."
+
+Such trances have been of common occurrence in the religious life of the
+world, as Professor James has shown so exhaustively in his great book,
+"Varieties of Religious Experience." And in that book, too, it is
+maintained, against the scientific conclusions, that such ecstasies
+"signify nothing but suggested and imitated hypnoid states, on an
+intellectual basis of superstition, and a corporal one of degeneration and
+hysteria," that mystical states have an actual value as revelations of the
+truth. After passing in review many examples of ecstasy and trance, from
+the occasional experiences of the poets to the constant experiences of the
+mediaeval mystics and the Hindu Yogis, he finally comes to the interesting
+conclusion that:
+
+    "This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and
+    the absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we
+    both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our one-ness.
+    This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly
+    altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in
+    Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we
+    find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical
+    utterances an eternal unanimity--which ought to make a critic stop and
+    think, and which brings it about that the mystical classics have, as
+    has been said, neither birthday nor native land."
+
+The witness given religion in Tennyson's mystical trances is then his most
+valuable contribution to the speculative thought of the century, and in a
+sense is prophetic of the twentieth century, because in this century
+revelations attained in this way have been given a credence long denied
+them except in the case of the uneducated and super-emotional, by a man of
+the sound scholarship and good judgment of Professor James.
+
+How fully Browning was a representative of the thought of this time,
+combining as he did an intuitional with a scientific outlook has already
+been shown. Evolution means for him the progress toward the infinite, and
+is full of beauty and promise. The failures in nature and life which fill
+Tennyson with despair furnish to Browning's mind a proof of the existence
+of the absolute, or a somewhere beyond, where things will be righted.
+Observation shows him everywhere in the universe the existence of power
+and mystery. The mystery is either that of the incomprehensibleness of
+causes, or is emphasized in the existence of evil. The first leads to awe
+and wonder, and is a constant spur to mankind to seek further knowledge,
+but the poet insists that the knowledge so accumulated is not actual gain,
+but only a means to gain in so far as it keeps bringing home to the human
+mind the fact of its own inadequacy in the discovery of truth. The
+existence of evil leads to the constant effort to overcome it, and to
+sympathy and pity, and as the failure of knowledge proves a future of
+truth to be won, so the failure of mankind to attain perfection in moral
+action proves a future of goodness to be realized. All this may be found
+either explicitly or implied in the synthetic philosophy of Herbert
+Spencer, whose fundamental principles, despite the fire of criticism to
+which he has been subjected from all sides--science, religion,
+metaphysics, each of which felt it could not claim him exclusively as its
+own, yet resenting his inclusion of the other two--are now, in the first
+decade of the twentieth century, receiving the fullest recognition by such
+masters of the history of nineteenth-century thought as Theodore Merz and
+Emile Boutroux.
+
+People often forget that while Spencer spent his life upon the knowledge
+or scientific side of human experience, he frequently asserted that there
+was in the human consciousness an intuition of the absolute which was the
+only certain knowledge possessed by man. Here again Browning was at one
+with Spencer. Discussing the problem of a future life in "La Saisiaz," he
+declares that God and the soul are the only facts of which he is
+absolutely certain:
+
+  "I have questioned and am answered. Question, answer presuppose
+  Two points: that the thing itself which questions, answers--_is_, it
+      knows;
+  As it also knows the thing perceived outside itself--a force
+  Actual ere its own beginning, operative through its course,
+  Unaffected by its end--that this thing likewise needs must be;
+  Call this--God, then, call that--soul, and both--the only facts for me.
+  Prove them facts? That they o'erpass my power of proving, proves them
+      such."
+
+To this scientific and metaphysical side Browning adds, as has also
+already been pointed out, a mystical side based upon feeling. His
+revelations of divinity do not come by means of self-induced trances, as
+Tennyson's seem to have come, but through the mystery of feeling. This
+mystical state seems to have been his habitual one, if we may judge by its
+prominence in his poetry. He occasionally descends to the realm of reason,
+as he has in "La Saisiaz," but the true plane of his existence is up among
+the exaltations of aspiration and love. His cosmic sense is a sense of God
+as Love, and is the quality most characteristic of the man. It is like,
+though perhaps not identical with, the mysticism of Whitman, which seems
+to have been an habitual state. He writes: "There is, apart from mere
+intellect, in the make-up of every superior human identity, a wondrous
+something that realizes without argument, frequently without what is
+called education (though I think it the goal and apex of all education
+deserving the name), an intuition of the absolute balance, in time and
+space, of the whole of this multifariousness, this revel of fools, and
+incredible make-believe and general unsettledness we call _the world_; a
+soul-sight of that divine clue and unseen thread which holds the whole
+congeries of things, all history and time, and all events, however
+trivial, however momentous, like a leashed dog in the hand of the
+hunter."
+
+This mystic mood of Browning's which underlies his whole work--even a work
+like "The Ring and the Book," where evil in various forms is rampant and
+seems for the time being to conquer--is nowhere more fully, and at the
+same time more concisely, expressed than in his poem "Reverie," one of his
+last, which ends with a full revelation of this mystical feeling, from
+which the less inspired reasoning of "La Saisiaz" is a descent:
+
+  "Even as the world its life,
+      So have I lived my own--
+  Power seen with Love at strife,
+      That sure, this dimly shown--
+  Good rare and evil rife
+
+  "Whereof the effect be--faith
+      That, some far day, were found
+  Ripeness in things now rathe,
+      Wrong righted, each chain unbound,
+  Renewal born out of scathe.
+
+  "Why faith--but to lift the load,
+      To leaven the lump, where lies
+  Mind prostrate through knowledge owed
+      To the loveless Power it tries
+  To withstand, how vain! In flowed
+
+  "Ever resistless fact:
+      No more than the passive clay
+  Disputes the potter's act,
+      Could the whelmed mind disobey
+  Knowledge the cataract.
+
+  "But, perfect in every part,
+      Has the potter's moulded shape,
+  Leap of man's quickened heart,
+      Throe of his thought's escape,
+  Stings of his soul which dart,
+
+  "Through the barrier of flesh, till keen
+      She climbs from the calm and clear,
+  Through turbidity all between
+      From the known to the unknown here,
+  Heaven's 'Shall be' from Earth's 'Has been'?
+
+  "Then life is--to wake not sleep,
+      Rise and not rest, but press
+  From earth's level where blindly creep
+      Things perfected more or less,
+  To the heaven's height, far and steep,
+
+  "Where, amid what strifes and storms
+      May wait the adventurous quest,
+  Power is Love--transports, transforms,
+      Who aspired from worst to best,
+  Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms!
+
+  "I have faith such end shall be:
+      From the first, Power was--I knew.
+  Life has made clear to me
+      That, strive but for closer view,
+  Love were as plain to see.
+
+  "When see? When there dawns a day,
+      If not on the homely earth,
+  Then yonder, worlds away,
+      Where the strange and new have birth
+  And Power comes full in play."
+
+Browning has, far more than Tennyson, put religious speculation upon a
+basis where it may stand irrespective of a belief in the revelations of
+historical Christianity. For the central doctrine of Christianity he had
+so profound a reverence that he recurs to it again and again in his
+poetry, and at times his feeling seems to carry him to the verge of
+orthodox belief. So near does he come to it that many religious critics
+have been convinced that he might be claimed as a Christian in the
+orthodox sense of the word.
+
+A more careful reading, however, of such poems as "The Death in the
+Desert," and "Christmas Eve and Easter Day," upon which rest principally
+the claim of the poet's orthodoxy, will reveal that no certain assertion
+of a belief in supernaturalism is made, even though the poems are dramatic
+and it might be made without necessarily expressing the feeling of the
+poet. What Browning felt was that in historical Christianity the highest
+symbol of divine love had been reached. Though he may at times have had
+moods in which he would fain have believed true an ideal which held for
+him great beauty, his worth for his age was in saving religion, _not_ upon
+a basis of faith, but upon the ground of logical arguments deduced from
+the failure of knowledge, of his personal intuition of God and his
+mystical vision in regard to the nature of God.
+
+So complete a synthesis is this that only in the present century is its
+full purport likely to be realized. The thought of the century is showing
+everywhere a strong reaction away from materialism and toward religious
+thought.
+
+Even in the latest stronghold of science, psychology, as we have already
+seen, there is no formula which will explain the existence of
+individuality. While the scientists themselves plod on, often quite
+unconscious that they are not dealing with ultimates, the thinkers are no
+longer satisfied with a philosophy of materialism, and once more it is
+being recognized that the province of philosophy is to give us God, the
+soul and immortality.
+
+It is especially interesting in this connection to observe that Germany,
+the land of destructive biblical criticism, which Browning before the
+middle of the century handled with the consummate skill characteristic of
+him, by accepting its historical conclusions while conserving the spirit
+of Christianity, has now in the person of Professor Rudolf Eucken done an
+almost similar thing. Like Browning, he is a strong individualist and
+believes that the development of the soul is the one thing of supreme
+moment. "There is a spontaneous springing up of the individual spiritual
+life," he writes, "only within the soul of the individual. All social and
+all historical life that does not unceasingly draw from this source falls
+irrecoverably into a state of stagnation and desolation. The individual
+can never be reduced to the position of a mere member of society, of a
+church, of a state; notwithstanding all external subordination, he must
+assert an inner superiority; each spiritual individual is more than the
+whole external world."
+
+[Illustration: BROWNING AT 77 (1889)]
+
+He calls his system "activism," which merely seems to be another way of
+saying that the soul-life is one of aspiration toward moral ideals and the
+will to carry them out. Such a life, he thinks, demands a new world and a
+new character in man, and is entirely at variance with nature. "Our whole
+life is an indefatigable seeking and pressing forward. In
+self-consciousness the framework is given which has to be filled; in it we
+have acquired only the basis upon which the superstructure has to be
+raised. We have to find experience in life itself to reveal something new,
+to develop life, to increase its range and depth. The endeavor to advance
+in spirituality, to win through struggle, is the soul of the life of the
+individual and the work of universal history." Readers of Browning will
+certainly not feel that there is anything new in this.
+
+In so far, however, as he finds the spiritual life at variance with nature
+he parts company with Browning, showing himself to be under the influence
+of the dualism of the past which regarded matter and spirit as
+antagonistic. In Browning's view, matter and spirit are the two aspects of
+God, in the one, power being manifested; in the other, love.
+
+It follows naturally from this, that Eucken does not think of evil as a
+means by which good is developed. He prefers to regard it as unexplained,
+and forever with us to be overcome. Its reduction to a means of realizing
+the good leads, he thinks, "to a weakening which threatens to transform
+the mighty world-struggle into an artistic arrangement of things and into
+an effeminate play, and which takes away that bitterness from evil without
+which there is no strenuousness in the struggle and no vitality in life.
+Thus it remains true that religion does not so much explain as presuppose
+evil." An attempt to explain evil, he says, belongs to speculation rather
+than to religion. That he has an inkling of the region to which
+speculation might lead him is shown when it is realized, that upon his
+explanation, as one critic of him has said, it might be possible to find
+"some reconciliation in the fact that this world with its negations had
+awakened the spiritual life to its absolute affirmation, which could,
+therefore, not be in absolute opposition."
+
+In leaving aside speculation and confining himself to what he considers
+the religious aspects of life, he no doubt strengthens himself as a leader
+of those whose speculative powers have not yet been developed, or who can
+put one side of the mind to sleep and accept with the other half-truths.
+The more developed mind, however, will prefer Browning's greater
+inclusiveness. To possess a complete view of life, man must live his own
+life as a human being struggling to overcome the evil, at the same time
+keeping in mind the fact that evil is in a sense the raw material provided
+by God, or the Absolute, or whatever name one chooses to give to the
+all-powerful and all-loving, from which the active soul of man is to
+derive a richness of beauty and harmony of development not otherwise
+possible. Eucken's attitude toward Jesus is summed up in a way which
+reminds one strongly of the position taken in the comment made at the end
+of "The Death in the Desert." He writes: "The position of the believer in
+the universal Christian Church is grounded upon a relation to God whose
+uniqueness emerges from the essential divinity of Jesus; only on this
+supposition can the personality of Christ stand as the unconditional Lord
+and Master to whom the ages must do homage. And while the person of Jesus
+retains a wonderful majesty apart from dogma, its greatness is confined to
+the realm of humanity, and whatever of new and divine life it brings to us
+must be potential and capable of realization in us all. We therefore see
+no more in this figure the normative and universally valid type of all
+human life, but merely an incomparable individuality which cannot be
+directly imitated. At any rate the figure of Jesus, thus understood in all
+its height and pure humanity, can no longer be an object of faith and
+divine honor. All attempts to take shelter in a mediating position are
+shattered against a relentless either--or. Between man and God there is no
+intermediate form of being for us, for we cannot sink back into the
+ancient cult of heroes. If Jesus, therefore, is not God, if Christ is not
+the second person in the Trinity, then he is a man; not a man like any
+average man among ourselves, but still man. We can therefore honor him as
+a leader, a hero, a martyr, but we cannot directly bind ourselves to him
+or root ourselves in him; we cannot submit to him unconditionally. Still
+less can we make him the centre of a cult. To do so from our point of view
+would be nothing else than an intolerable deification of a human being."
+The comment at the end of "The Death in the Desert" puts a similar
+question, and answers, "Call Christ, then, the illimitable God, Or Lost!"
+But the final word which casts a light back upon the previous conclusion
+is "But, 'twas Cerinthus that is lost"--the man, in other words, who held
+the heresy that the Christ part only resided in Jesus, who was merely
+human, and that the divine part was not crucified, having flown away
+before. Thus it is implied that neither those who believe Jesus divine,
+nor those who believe him human, are lost, but those who try as Cerinthus
+did to make a compromise. The same note is struck in "Christmas Eve," and
+now Professor Eucken takes an exactly similar ground in regard to any sort
+of compromise, coming out boldly, however, as Browning does not in this
+poem, though he makes no strong argument against it--in the acceptance of
+Christ as human. Browning's own attitude is expressed as clearly as it is
+anywhere in his work in the epilogue to "Dramatis Personae," in which the
+conclusion is entirely in sympathy with that of Eucken:
+
+  "When you see what I tell you--nature dance
+  About each man of us, retire, advance,
+  As though the pageant's end were to enhance
+
+  "His worth, and--once the life, his product gained--
+  Roll away elsewhere, keep the strife sustained,
+  And show thus real, a thing the North but feigned--
+
+  "When you acknowledge that one world could do
+  All the diverse work, old yet ever new,
+  Divide us, each from other, me from you--
+
+  "Why, where's the need of Temple, when the walls
+  O' the world are that? What use of swells and falls
+  From Levites' choir, Priests' cries, and trumpet calls?
+
+  "That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
+  Or decomposes but to recompose,
+  Become my universe that feels and knows."
+
+The hold which the philosophy of Eucken seems to have taken upon the minds
+of many people all over the world shows that it must have great elements
+of strength. That there is a partial resemblance between his thought,
+which belongs to the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the
+twentieth century, and Browning's is certain, but the fact remains that
+the poet made a synthesis of the elements which must go to the forming of
+any complete religious conceptions of the future so far in advance of his
+own century that even Eucken is in some respects behind it.
+
+Another interesting instance of Browning's presenting a line of reasoning
+which resembles very strongly one phase of present-day philosophy is to be
+found in "Bishop Blougram's Apology." The worldly Bishop gives voice to
+good pragmatic doctrine, which in a nutshell is, "believe in, or rather
+follow, that ideal which will be of the most use to you, and if it turns
+out not to be successful, then try another one." The poet declares that
+Blougram said good things but called them by wrong names. If the ideal is
+a high one there is no great danger in such reasoning, but it can very
+easily be turned into sophistical arguments for an ideal of living to
+thoroughly selfish ends, as Blougram actually did. The poem might almost
+be taken as a prophetic criticism of the weak aspects of pragmatism.
+
+The belief in immortality which pervades Browning's work often comes out
+in a form suggesting the idea of reincarnation. His future for the human
+soul is not a heaven of bliss, but life in other worlds full of activity
+and aspiration. This note is struck in "Paracelsus," where life's destiny
+is described to be the climbing of pleasure's heights forever the seeking
+of a flying point of bliss remote. In his last volume the idea is more
+fully brought out in "Rephan." In this it is held that a state of perfect
+bliss might grow monotonous, and that a preferable state would be to
+aspire, yet never attain, to the object aimed at. The transmigration is
+from "Rephan," where all was merged in a neutral Best to Earth, where the
+soul which had been stagnating would have an opportunity to strive, not
+rest. The most beautiful expression, however, of the idea of a future of
+many lives is found in "One Word More":
+
+  "So it seems: I stand on my attainment.
+  This of verse, alone, one life allows me;
+  Verse and nothing else have I to give you.
+  Other heights in other lives, God willing:
+  All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!"
+
+Though the theory of reincarnation is so ancient a one, and one entirely
+discredited by Christianity, Browning was again expressing an ideal which
+was to be revived in our own day. Oriental thought has made it almost a
+commonplace of talk. Many people doubtless speak of what they mean to do
+in their next incarnation without having the thought very deeply imbedded
+in their consciousness, yet the mere fact that one hears the remark so
+often proves what a hold the theory has on the imagination of mankind. As
+Browning gives it in "One Word More," the successive incarnations take one
+on to higher heights--"other lives in other worlds." Thus regarded, it is
+the final outcome of evolution and progress, a process to be carried
+forward in other worlds than our own, and has no degrading suggestion of a
+degenerating, because of sin, into lower forms of existence. The movement
+is always upward. Thus it has been effected by the idea that progress is
+the law of life, and that evolution means, on the whole, progress.
+
+Again, in the liberality of his social ideals, combined with an intensest
+belief in the supremacy of genuine love, he was the forerunner of Ibsen,
+who, the world is beginning to discover, was not a subverter of high moral
+ideals, as it had thought, but a prophet of the new day, when to be untrue
+to the highest ideal of love will be accounted the greatest crime of one
+human being against another. From "The Doll's House" to "When We That Are
+Dead Awaken" the same lesson is taught. Few people realize that this is
+the keynote of Browning's teaching, or would be ready to regard him as a
+prophet of an ideal of love which shall come to be seen as the true one
+after the science of eugenics, the latest of the exact sciences, has found
+itself as powerless as all other sciences have been to touch the reality
+of life, because amid all the mysteries of the universe none is greater
+than the spiritual mystery of love. Among writers who are to-day
+recognizing a part of the truth, at least, is Ellen Key, but neither she
+nor Ibsen has insisted in the way that Browning has upon the mystical
+source of human love. That Browning is the poet who has given the world
+the utmost certainty of God, the soul and immortality, and the most
+inspiring ideals of human love, will be more completely recognized in the
+future. As time goes on he will emerge above the tumultuous intellectual
+life of the present, which, with its enormous increase of knowledge of
+phenomena, bringing with it a fairly titanic mastery of the forces of
+nature, and its generation of multitudes of ideas upon every conceivable
+subject, many of them trite, many of them puerile, and some of them no
+doubt of genuine value, obscures for the time being the greatness of any
+one voice. A little later, when the winnowing of ideas shall come,
+Browning will be recognized as one of the greatest men of his own age or
+any age--a man combining knowledge, wisdom, aspiration, and vision to a
+marvelous degree. He belongs to the master-order of poets, who write some
+things which will pass into the popular knowledge of the day, but whose
+serious achievements will be read and studied by the cultured and
+scholarly of all time. No students of Greek literature will feel that they
+can omit from their reading his Greek poems, no students of sociology will
+feel that they can omit from their reading "The Ring and the Book." Lovers
+of the drama must ever respond to the beauty of "The Blot in the
+'Scutcheon" and "Pippa Passes." Even the student of verse technique will
+not be able to leave Browning out of account, and making allowances for
+the fact that the individuality of his style sometimes overasserts itself,
+he will realize more and more its freshness and its vividness, its power
+of suggestion, and its depths of emotional fervor. When the romanticism of
+a Keats or a Shelley has completely worked itself out in musical
+efflorescence; from which all thought-content has disappeared, there may
+grow up a school of poets which shall, without direct imitation, develop
+poetry along the lines of vigor and strength in form, and which shall have
+for its content a tremendous sense of the worth of humanity and an
+unshakable belief in the splendor of its destiny. _Virilists_ might well
+be the name of this future school of poets who would hark back to Browning
+as their inspiration, and a most pleasant contrast would they be to the
+sentimental namby-pambyism which passes muster as poetry in much of the
+work of to-day.
+
+In closing this volume which has been inspired by a deep sense of the
+abiding greatness of Robert Browning, it has been my desire to put on
+record in some way my personal indebtedness to his poetry as an
+inspiration not only to high thinking and living, but as a genuine
+revelation to me of the rare possibilities in poetic art, for I may almost
+say that Browning was my first poet, and through him, strange as it may
+seem, I came to an appreciation of all other poets. His poetry,
+fortunately for me an early influence in my life, awakened my, until then,
+dormant faculty for poetic appreciation. I owe him, therefore, a double
+debt of gratitude: Not only has he given me the joy of knowing his own
+great work, but through him I have entered the land of all poesie, led as
+I truly think by his sympathy with the scientific dispensation into which
+I was born. His thought has always seemed so naturally akin to my own
+that it has never seemed to me obscure. Finding such thoughts expressed
+through the medium of great poetic genius, the beauty of poetic expression
+was brought home to me as it never had been before, and hence the poetic
+expression of all thought became a deep pleasure to me.
+
+So much interpretation and criticism of Browning has been given to the
+world during the last twenty years, that further work in that direction
+seems hardly necessary for the present. There will for many a day to come
+be those who feel him to be among the greatest poets the world has seen,
+and those who find much more to blame in his work than to praise.
+
+I have tried to give a few suggestions in regard to what Robert Browning
+actually was in relation to his time. The nineteenth century was so
+remarkable a one in the complexity of its growth, both in practical
+affairs and in intellectual developments, that it has been possible in the
+space of one volume to touch only upon the most important aspects under
+each division, and to try to show what measure of influence important
+movements had in the molding of the poet's genius.
+
+Though in the nature of the case the treatment could not be exhaustive, I
+hope to have opened out a sufficient number of pathways into the
+fascinating vistas of the nineteenth century in its relation to Browning
+to inspire others to make further excursions for themselves; and, above
+all, I hope I may have added at least one stone to the cairn which many,
+past and to come, are building to his fame.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] The influence of the "Prometheus Unbound" upon the conception of
+Aprile's character was first brought forward by the writer in a paper read
+before the Boston Browning Society, March 15, 1910, a typewritten copy of
+which was placed in the Browning alcove in the Boston Public Library. In
+the "Life of Browning," published the same year and not read by the writer
+until recently, Mr. Hall Griffin touches upon the same thought in the
+following words: "From some elements in the myth of Prometheus Browning
+unmistakably evolved the conception of his Aprile as not only the lover
+and the poet but as the potential sculptor, painter, orator, and
+musician."
+
+[2] See the author's "Browning's England."
+
+[3] See Introduction to "Ring and Book"--Camberwell Browning.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Browning and His Century, by Helen Archibald Clarke
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